


Jak and Daxter: The Darkness Within

by x_jam_x



Series: A Twist of Fate [2]
Category: Jak and Daxter
Genre: Gen, M/M, Slash, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-04 20:45:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 60,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3088739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_jam_x/pseuds/x_jam_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But two years can change a person. It gives a person time to think and linger on all of those 'what ifs,' and stew on the fact that, no matter how much you might want to, you can never go back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to wait to post the sequel until after it was completed, but....naaaaaah.

It was amazing how quickly one’s life could change. One innocent trip to a forbidden island on the edge of the horizon had changed two young boys’ lives forever. Jak sometimes wondered what would have happened if Daxter hadn’t agreed to go with him that fateful night. Would the older teen have gone alone, or would he have stayed behind with his friend? If Jak had stayed, he would have never fallen into that vat of Dark Eco. He wouldn’t see this pale, washed-out version of himself every time he saw his reflection, wouldn’t have to deal with claws and horns and a rage that constantly simmered under the surface. But, if he had stayed, would he and Daxter have even made it to Gol and Maia’s citadel? Would Jak have been able to fight, and possibly kill, all of those Lurkers on his own without the thirst for blood fueling him? What would the world be like now if Gol and Maia had succeeded? Would there even be a world at all?

Such a simple decision to break a rule might have ended up saving the world.

It made Jak think about the significance of other decisions he’d made in life.

What if Jak had gone to see the Oracle like was supposed to?

What if they had never found the Rift Gate?

What if, what if…

How much of an impact did other seemingly meaningless choices have on the greater scheme of things? ‘What ifs’ would haunt Jak for a long time. If he had done this, would this have happened; if he hadn’t done that, would things be better; and what if he hadn’t done anything at all? Jak wasn’t usually the kind of guy to worry so much about the consequences of his actions. He lived in the moment and did what felt right, and everything had always worked out just fine. At the young age of fifteen, Jak hadn’t had any regrets. Why waste time worrying over things he couldn’t change when his and Daxter’s actions had saved everyone? But two years can change a person. It gives a person time to think and linger on all of those ‘what ifs,’ and stew on the fact that, no matter how much you might want to, you can never go back.

 

-x- 

 

“Today’s the big day, Jak!”

The pale fifteen year old boy smiled as his mentor strode towards him, staff in hand. Even though the sun had only just barely risen over the horizon, it might as well have been midday at Samos’ hut. After a long two weeks of lugging Precursor parts and letting Keira work her magic, the strange machine they had found at Gol and Maia’s citadel had finally been moved and reconstructed back at Sandover. The finished product looked something like an oversized warp gate. The gate itself was made up of giant, intricately carved interlocking Precursor rings which they had propped up and attached to Samos’ little island by building scaffolding underneath it. The energy swirling in the center of the rings glowed with a brilliance that could only be outmatched by Light Eco. Keira was finally satisfied that she had gotten the machine back to working order and all of them were excited to see what exactly the machine did. Well…at least he and Keira were. Seeing as it was a giant Precursor artifact, Daxter could honestly only get so excited. Jak had practically had to carry him out of their hut to get him to show up at all, and he had promptly fallen asleep where he had been dumped in the seat of the cart that was connected to the machine via a rickety wooden ramp and homemade tracks.

Samos, on the other hand, was hard to read. One minute he would seem excited but, when he thought no one was looking, he would gaze at the Precursor machine with a hard, pensive expression. That look was leaking into his expression now, though Jak could tell the old sage was trying to hide it.

“I hope you are prepared for whatever happens...”

“I think I’ve figured out most of this machine,” Keira grinned before Jak could dwell too much on the sage’s words as she affectionately ran a hand over the side of the cart. She was definitely the most excited about today’s test run. Though the strange machine wasn’t an invention of her own, she had put just as much blood, sweat, and tears into it as her Zoomer or one of her scout flies. As she slid into the seat next to Daxter, she gazed at the machinery around her not unlike a mother or father might look at their child. “It interacts somehow with that large Precursor ring. I just hope we didn’t break anything moving it here from the lab.”

“Easy for _you_ to say!” Daxter groused sleepily as he was accidentally jostled awake when Jak climbed into the seat next to him. He threw his arms behind him and stretched in the seat, not caring if Jak and Keira had to duck to miss being hit. He didn’t see why he had to get up at the crack of dawn to test out this Precursor monstrosity when they could have just waited a few more hours and let him sleep in. “ _We_ did all the heavy lifting!” he finished, jerking his head in Jak’s direction.

It was only slightly true. Moving the smaller parts had been pretty easy. All Jak and Daxter had had to do was carry them down the elevator in the Gol and Maia’s citadel and chuck them through the warp gate by the Yellow Sage’s hut. To move the larger pieces, Keira had come up with the brilliant plan of recycling the Lurkers’ dirigible. They had figured that if it could pry Precursor robot parts from the thick, cloying mud of the swamp, then it could be used to move parts from the citadel back to Sandover with no problem. Jak’s uncle had been more help in that department. The thought of climbing a 50 ft sheer rock wall exhilarated Jak, the rush he got from being launched by a Blue Eco pad thrilled him, but there was something about the thought of hovering in midair, hundreds and hundreds of feet above the surface, that just rubbed him the wrong way. For his uncle, though, it was just another adventure to add to his list. Jak and Daxter would live vicariously through the old explorer’s stories of the glory of flight so long as they never had to try it out for themselves.

Despite how much Daxter really wished he could just go back to bed, however, there was still a very, very small, almost insignificant part of him that was curious about this machine. Even if he didn’t particularly like the Precursors or anything they had built (they made all their crap such a horrible shade of orange, and who needed Dark Eco or giant robots anyway?), he still wondered about them. How could he not occasionally wonder about the race that had apparently created the entire _world_?

“Daxter! Don’t touch anything!” the Green Eco Sage snapped before Daxter’s wandering hands could touch any of the controls in front of him. The orange-haired boy winced and glared out of the corner of his eye to see Samos practically looming over him. Nope. He did not need _this_ first thing in the morning. “Though the Precursors vanished long ago, the artifacts they left behind can still do great harm!”

Daxter shared an exaggerated eye roll with Jak before shaking his head and shimmying further down into the seat. As if he had to tell _them_ that. It’s not like they hadn’t gone on a trip practically across the world to stop Gol and Maia from using a giant Precursor artifact to open another giant Precursor artifact full of ancient Precursor sludge. He tried to look slightly less homicidal when his horned friend nudged him with an elbow and smiled knowingly down at him, but it was hard. Daxter first thing in the morning had a shorter fuse than Jak, and that was saying something these days.

At least now that this… _thing_ had been built, Jak could _finally_ get his sorry ass down the beach and go talk to the Oracle. Daxter wasn’t going to let his friend come up with any more excuses. First there was the whole ‘we need to stop the end of the world first’ excuse which, Daxter had to admit, was pretty good. If they had stopped to train Jak’s Eco powers, the world would probably be kind of dead by now. The ‘we should collect all the Power Cells’ excuse was pushing it, but had there really been any harm in procrastinating just a little bit more when it was just the two of them running around and Jak didn’t have to worry about accidentally skewering somebody he actually liked? And there had still been plenty of pissed off Lurkers to deal with.

But Jak had been different when he came back to the village. It wasn’t that he wasn’t the same cheerful, thrill-seeking, hard-headed teenager he always had been, but he wasn’t as friendly with the other villagers as he used to be. It hadn’t taken the villagers long to realize that talking badly about Daxter anywhere within earshot of Jak was very, very unwise, and Daxter hadn’t suddenly forgotten that none of those people had been particularly fond of him to begin with. Though Daxter sort of liked the fact that people had stopped picking on him, it was only a matter of time before somebody slipped and it would be really bad if Jak accidentally butchered somebody. The orange-haired teen had a sneaking suspicion that Jak had been avoiding the Oracle because he didn’t want to have to confront the darker side of himself, wanted to shove it away in a box and pretend it didn’t exist. Daxter could understand that, but pretending it wasn’t there wouldn’t make it go away.

“…or great good,” Keira was saying, trying to lighten the mood and again reminding Daxter of the Precursor Oracle watching them stoically from just down the beach, “if you know how to use them!”

“I’ve had some experience with such things. I know you can make it work,” Samos said to Jak as he, too, slipped into the cart. It was a tight fit with the four of them all crammed into one tight space, but no one was willing to sit on the side and miss out on...whatever was about to happen. Which was another thing Daxter was kind of sore about. There had to be a safer way to test this thing than piling into it and crossing their fingers that they wouldn’t blow up. The young teen had been paranoid from the second he’d seen it – he just _knew_ something bad was going to happen – but Jak and Keira were forces to be reckoned with. Daxter had never been able to prevent Jak from going on any of his hare-brained adventures before, and there was no way he could have prevented Keira from diving headfirst into this machine. He just had to cross his fingers and hope that Samos’ presence would counteract his and Jak’s questionable luck.

Though Keira had recreated the machine and claimed that it was completely functional, she hadn’t actually been able to get it to _do_ anything. Yea, the gate thing was glowing like crazy and the funny screens on the cart were spouting gibberish in the Precursor language, but that’s about all it seemed to do. The lights were on but nobody was home. The green-haired mechanic was putting all her hopes in Jak, who seemed to have a natural affinity for Precursor crap. With only the slightest bit of hesitation, Jak reached out and placed his hand on the badge-shaped red gem on the console in front of them. Instantly it began to glow with a soft warmth and they all heard a surprisingly loud click as the switch activated. The cart around them began to hum with life, and many of the screens that had been dark before suddenly snapped on and began to display messages that neither Jak nor Daxter could ever hope to understand. The piece that Daxter had been about to touch earlier, a gizmo that looked a lot like a Precursor Orb if slightly bigger and rounder rather than egg-shaped, suddenly popped open by itself and revealed a fiery, golden core.

“Looks like Jak’s still got the mojo,” the youngest teen commented smugly, in part to cover his sudden nerves. They were really, actually doing this. How _did_ he let Jak talk him into these kinds of things?

“Interesting…” Keira whispered as she leaned closer to the small, fiery light and glanced with awe at the various screens across the dashboard. “It appears to be reading out some preset coordinates!”

‘Preset coordinates to _where_?’ Daxter wanted to ask but, before he could say anything, everything started to go south. The Precursor Orb-shaped gizmo suddenly snapped shut with an ominous click and the smaller ring of Precursor metal attached to the back of the cart behind them started to move. It rotated slowly behind them, beams of Blue Eco from its protruding antennae lancing out like bolts of lightning to latch onto the larger rings ahead of them and disappear. With each beam, the giant rings began to move themselves until they lurched from their wooden stand so violently that it tore it apart completely and began to hover in midair. At first Daxter could admit that he’d been a little scared (completely terrified), but as seconds passed and they weren’t being blown to smithereens, he could appreciate what was going on in front of him. It seemed that the machine really was just one giant warp gate. The gate itself, which had been glowing with brilliant white light before, now swirled with the chaotic blues and purples of any other warp gate.

“Wow…wouldja look at that?” Daxter gasped in awe. If any of the teens had been paying attention to their mentor, they may have noticed the way his skin had suddenly paled with realization or how his eyes had filled with dread. If Samos was right, and Samos was almost always right, then this was the day he had been waiting for all these years. This was the day everything would change.

The sky suddenly turned dark as if someone had snuffed out the sun, and the only light came from the swirling gate before them. The wind inexplicably picked up, whistling harshly around them, and faces full of wonder quickly morphed into faces of concern and worry. From the depths of the gate, a deep and foreboding voice the likes of which none of them had ever heard bellowed triumphantly. “Finally! The last Rift Gate has been opened!”

Nope, nope, nope – this was bad. This was very bad. Daxter knew he should have just stayed in bed. It wouldn’t have helped, but at least he could have died peacefully in his sleep. The terrified boy yelped and unconsciously leaned into Jak as swarms and swarms of… _something_ began to pour out of the gate. They almost looked like wumpbees, if wumpbees were the size of Yakows and let out ear-splitting screeches that made Daxter feel as if his spine was trying to slither out of his back. Next to him, Jak watched them with narrowed eyes, his aura of Dark Eco crackling sporadically. At any other time, Jak’s mere presence might have been enough to keep Daxter calm, but the scene playing out before him was like something out of a nightmare. The younger boy yelled as one of the giant beasts flew dangerously close overhead and ducked as far down into the seat as he could. “What are those things?!?”

The old Green Eco Sage looked around with a surreal sort of calm, watching as the creatures began to fly over the village. “So this is how it happened,” he muttered to himself. When he turned back to the gate, a hideous face he had honestly hoped to never see again had appeared in the cycling vortex. A face not from this world, attached to a creature antithesis to everything the Precursors stood for. The massive creature lurking in the gate roared with bloodlust and triumph, its claws reaching through the portal and entering into their world. Eleven years couldn’t have prepared Samos for this, even if he knew that this would happen.

“You cannot hide from me, boy!” the monster crowed, crawling even further into their dimension. Keira was the first to recover and turned to the only one of them who could control the machine.

“Do something, Jak!”

Daxter snapped next, his panic getting the best of them as the monster in front of them let out a cackle so full of malice and sadism that it filled him with more fear than any of Maia’s crazed chuckles ever could. He began pressing every gizmo and pulling every lever in sight, hoping that something, anything, he did would make the monster go away. “What’s this thing do?! Or…or that?? How ‘bout this one? Everybody, press all the buttons!”

Jak slammed his and down on the red gem-like button he had pressed before, hoping it would shut off the machine, and hissed as the cart suddenly flew into the motion. It soared down the ramshackle track and headed straight for the grinning maw of the beast in front of them. Daxter was positive they were going to die. He had been absolutely right, not that it mattered much now. Nothing ever good came from messing with Precursor junk! The teen shut his eyes as they got closer and closer to the gate and waited for the end but…nothing happened.

Well, something had happened. They had apparently gone right past the monster, had entered the rift gate, and were now flying towards who knew where. It wasn’t like any warp gate Daxter had been through before. Whenever he used the gate at Samos’, there wasn’t any time between when he jumped into the gate and when he was spat back out. He didn’t have time to look around and see what the inside of a gate looked like. It was dizzying and vibrant and nauseating and beautiful all at the same time, and Daxter wasn’t sure if he wanted to shut his eyes to block it out or keep looking to make sure he didn’t miss anything.

“What was that thing?” Keira yelled into the rushing wind of the inside of the gate, but even if someone knew the answer, they were being rocked and buffeted around too much to answer properly. It wasn’t exactly a smooth ride.

“Hang on everyone!” Samos warned as they barreled faster and faster toward the light at the end of the sickeningly spiraling tunnel.

Daxter finally made up his mind and decided that he really, really hated warp gates. He was never going to go through another one again – EVER. He didn’t care how big or small it was, he was just going to have to walk! Provided they made it out of here alive. As the cart really began to rattle and shake, feeling almost as if it wanted to fling itself apart, Daxter couldn’t hold back a terrified scream. “I want off this thiiiiing!”

And just as they were reaching the end of the tunnel, just when Daxter thought this crazy ride from hell might be over, the worst happened. A jolt of energy lanced through the rattled machine and literally shook it apart. It practically disintegrated beneath them, the explosion sending all four of them tumbling in different directions. Daxter couldn’t tell which way was up and which was down, let alone where Jak or anyone else had flown off to. He threw his arms over his eyes as he rocketed closer and closer toward the blinding white before him and just prayed that everyone would make it to the other side in one piece.

Jak was just as lost, tumbling helplessly toward the other end of the gate and hating every second of it. He couldn’t see the others anywhere and that worried him, but he couldn’t do anything about it now. As he braced himself for whatever was coming, he thought he could hear Samos call to him in the distance.

“ _Find yourself, Jak…!”_

That was the last time Jak would hear a friendly voice for a long time.

Now, the pale teen wasn’t exactly sure where he expected to land, but he had expected to feel soft earth or hard rock beneath him. Maybe grass. Something familiar, at least. And perhaps the surface he landed on was somewhat familiar. He landed hard on some sort of metallic surface and winced as he skidded against the abrasive floor beneath him. With a pained groan, the young elf pushed himself to his knees and glancing warily around him to try to get his bearings. What he saw…well, he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about what he saw.

Jak had never seen anything like it. Gol and Maia’s citadel had been made out of nothing but Precursor and elf-made metal, but it had just been one building and most of it had been built by the Precursors. It hadn’t been so different from the lost temple in the jungle, if much larger and far more sinister. But this? This was a sprawling landscape made from nothing but elf-made metal. Square-shaped buildings as tall as three or four of Samos’ huts stacked on top of each other surrounded him like towering walls, blocking out the horizon and making him feel as if he were somehow indoors even with the sky right above him. And the sky itself had a strange filmy quality to it, almost like the sky over Misty Island and yet different, hazier. Jak glanced around in wonder as he pushed himself to his feet. Giant screens like the ones that had been on the machine flickered on every building with words Jak didn’t understand. Dozens of Zoomers of every color and shape conceivable flew through the air above him. And towering above everything was a building that he thought might have dwarfed even Gol and Maia’s citadel. He couldn’t get a good look at it with the sun shining right behind it, but the spires silhouetted against the sunlight reminded Jak of claws.

He appeared to be on some kind of metal bridge, and there were dozens, _hundreds_ of people gaping up at him in shock. He had never _seen_ so many people, and certainly not all in one place! Jak’s purple lightning crackled curiously around him against his will, and the people nearest to him screamed and ran away in terror. He might have been more upset about it if he hadn’t still been in such a state of shock himself, or if his instincts hadn’t honed in on the group of elves approaching him from the other side of the bridge. Unlike the other elves, who were now running and screaming in earnest, these elves were approaching him at a steady, confident march.

“There he is. Move in!” one of the elves barked in an oddly muffled voice. They wore some kind of armor that Jak had never seen before, made out of a material that didn’t appear to be metal, wood, or bone. Most of them wore red suits from head to toe, with masks covering their faces and red-tinted goggles over their eyes, but not the elf in front. He didn’t march so much as swagger towards Jak, and a yellow bodysuit peaked out from underneath his red armor. His face mask was pushed back to reveal a smirking face covered in strange, blue tattoos that vaguely reminded Jak of Maia, and he wondered if there was any connection between the two. The pale teen let out a warning growl as the group marched closer, instinctively hunching into a defensive position and spreading his claws. He had never fought elves before, but there was something about this group that didn’t feel right. He didn’t know what the strange items they held in their hands were, but he heavily suspected they were weapons they wouldn’t hesitate to use.

Jak glanced around him quickly to see if he could spot Daxter or any of the others, but he seemed to be alone. He could only hope that they would be okay, wherever they had ended up.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” the yellow-clad elf in front purred as he finally came to a stop. The other elves continued forward more hesitantly and fanned out on either side of their leader, weapons raised. Something about that voice rubbed Jak the wrong way. He bared his fangs and let his aura run wild, let it whip and snap around him like angry tentacles of lightning. Though the bloodlust was already singing through him, he didn’t want to fight these elves – not really. Fighting Lurkers was one thing. He didn’t particularly like doing _that_ either, but most Lurker species weren’t sentient and the ones that were had been hell bent on destroying the world. These elves, though? They could just be protecting their village from the strange demonic creature that had fallen from the sky. Jak knew they probably had families and friends waiting for them after they took off those clunky-looking suits. Could he hold back enough to just knock them out?

“Don’t damage it too much,” their leader ordered, and Jak bristled at being referred to as ‘it’. “The Baron will want it alive.”

The group of red-clad elves surged forward at once and Jak prepared to do whatever he needed to get them to back down, but he never got the chance to do much of anything at all. Almost as one, the elves aimed their weapons at him and something that almost looked like Blue Eco crackled out of them. But it couldn’t be Blue Eco, because he just would have absorbed it. Jak didn’t know what it was and he didn’t care because all he knew was mind-numbing agony – a pain so sudden and all-encompassing that he couldn’t even scream. It felt as if every single cell of his body had been set on fire and it just kept burning. When the elves finally relented, the pale ten collapsed to his hands and knees and tried to stop the world from spinning, stop his limbs from quivering, but he couldn’t. And when he finally managed to glance back up, that tattooed elf was smirking down at him with a dark leer that would have put Gol and Maia to shame.

“We’ve been waiting for you…”

And everything went black.


	2. Chapter 2

_Two Years Later…_

Jak had thought that Dark Eco couldn’t hurt him anymore. How could it when it was engrained into every cell in his body?

He had been wrong.

He wasn’t sure why – didn’t particularly care why anymore. The Dark Eco here was…different than his own, he knew that much. Tainted, if such a thing were possible. Worse, somehow. It felt _wrong_.

And it _burned_. Endlessly. Every day.

Burned so much that bone-deep lacerations and broken limbs meant nothing anymore. So much that his mind had just given up on recognizing pain, even if his body still reacted to it. Still arched and writhed and screamed pointlessly as they pumped more of that tainted acid into his veins. Jak didn’t even know why he was here anymore. He had forgotten a long time ago, years ago. Had it even been years? It was so hard to tell when there was no reliable way to tell the passage time. Maybe even the Baron had forgotten, too, because there didn’t seem to be any point to the torture these days. Before there had been questions, demands, interrogations; but now there was just _this_.

“ _Dark Eco injections complete. Bio readings highly unstable and erratic, but unchanged. Proceed with caution…_ ”

His tortured body flopped lifelessly to the cold metal surface beneath it when the Dark Eco stopped flowing and his mind lazily snatched onto the conversation happening above him. Just because the lights weren’t on didn’t mean he wasn’t still there. Wasn’t waiting for his chance…

“Heuh. Nothing,” a deep, gravelly voice huffed somewhere to his left. Baron Praxis. He never bothered to come by very often and didn’t linger long when he did, but Jak knew the gruff man was the reason he suffered. He lurked behind the scenes, ordered every new experiment and probably devised every new method of torture. Jak wondered how long the Baron would have survived if it had been _him_ strapped to this machine. “You would think that _this_ one might be different!”

“He is surprisingly resistant to your…‘experiments,’ Baron Praxis.” And _him_. Jak would never forget _that_ voice – not for as long as he lived. _Erol_. “I fear the Dark Warrior program has failed.”

“Aaargh!” the Baron roared in frustration, and the fire of Jak’s hair practically being yanked out of his head by the enraged elf barely even registered. It was a tickle compared to everything else he had been through this night alone. It just sickened him that the monster was so close and he couldn’t even lift a claw to swipe at him. “You should at least be dead with all the Dark Eco I’ve wasted on you!”

“What now? Metal Head armies are pressing their attacks. Without a new weapon, my men cannot hold them off forever!” Was that real fear in Erol’s voice? Erol used to be afraid of Jak, for a while. They hadn’t been able to control Jak at first, hadn’t known which buttons to press. At first…

“I will not be remembered as the elf who lost this city to those vile creatures!” Praxis bellowed somewhere above the pale teen. “Move forward with the final plan! As for this… _thing_ …If he won’t tell us his secrets, we’ll rip them, from his cold, lifeless corpse!”

“As you wish…” Erol replied easily, a dark smile in his voice. But on the cold table, Jak’s mind had come to a sudden halt. He almost didn’t notice when Erol came up to lean into his space…well, no. That was a lie. Jak always knew where Erol was. _Always_. He was just too preoccupied to bother half-heartedly growling at the bastard when it would be a waste of time anyway. “I’ll be back later…”

So this was it. All of Jak’s pain and suffering would finally end tonight. No more sharp, merciless needles digging under his skin; no more of the cold, invasive touch of scientists or the brutality of Guards; no more experiments; no more nights trapped alone in the insanity of his bloodthirsty mind. No more of Erol’s smug, disgusting leer peering at him from the darkest corner of the room while Jak screamed and writhed and gnashed his teeth in agony. Jak would die tonight, and he would finally slip into the numb oblivion of the afterlife. The thought should have filled the tormented seventeen year old with a sense of relief, or maybe even anticipation.

It only filled him with rage.

Everything angered him these days, not that there was much to be particularly happy about in a place like this. Jak clung to his rage and held it tight, draped it over himself like a blanket so that he could better hide from the reality that had become his life. Pain wasn’t quite as sharp, quite as soul-wrenching, when his mind was overwhelmed with the fire of hate. He could ignore the now familiar tang of blood in his mouth if he could pretend it belonged to someone else. Erol’s. The Baron’s. The Guard’s who liked to kick him and beat him every time he took him back to his cell.

Always theirs. Not his.

Because it was only his murderous thoughts that kept him going anymore. Only the thought of how satisfying it would be to sink his claws into Erol’s arrogant mug and _tear_ that got him through the night. How sweet it would be to see fear shining in the Baron’s remaining eye before Jak ripped it out of its socket. What other point to living remained? It’s not like anyone waited for him outside these walls. Sometimes he started to forget there was an ‘outside’ at all.

Only his cell, his captors, and his hatred existed.

Jak supposed sometimes, when he was just too tired to maintain his rage, that maybe Keira and Samos were still out there somewhere. Maybe they were even looking for him, but he knew they would never find him. Even if they managed to get here and break open his cell, all they would ever find was the bloodthirsty, broken husk of a boy. If Keira and Samos hadn’t feared Jak before, they would now. Sometimes…a lot of the time, Jak scared himself. It would be better if they just thought he had died.

Sometimes, late at night, Jak would console himself with the thought that Daxter was out there. Daxter had to be looking for him because he was _Daxter_ and they were a team and his young friend would never, ever abandon him. It was only a matter of time before Daxter managed to find a way to break Jak out of this hell hole. All he had to do was wait and be patient and hold on just a little bit longer. But then he would suddenly remember with a pain so violent it surpassed any of the Baron’s most depraved experiments…Daxter would never save him.

Because Daxter was dead, and Erol had killed him.

That was why Jak would never give up despite how much he just wanted all of this to end. He had to live, he had to escape, so that he could rip Erol and Praxis to shreds. He would do it nice and slow. So slow. And he would make them scream and beg for mercy that he would never grant them because they had killed Daxter, and they had made him suffer before he died. Tonight was Jak’s last chance. His last chance to get revenge for both Daxter and himself, and he wouldn’t let this chance slip through his claws, no. He had to break out… _he had to_. Jak would spill warm blood tonight, and he slipped into oblivion with that cold thought comforting him.

Sometime later, Jak was pried from his murderous dreams by an unfamiliar voice cutting through the silence. He was used to wails of agony and moans of despair from his fellow prisoners, to the sarcastic taunts of Guards echoing through the halls, but this voice was downright cheerful.

“Ding, ding! Third floor! Body chains, roach food, torture devices!”

His first thought was that Erol had finally returned, but even the most sadistic experiments couldn’t put that much pep in the soldier’s voice. And the more he listened to it, the more it seemed to tug at something in Jak. Like maybe he had heard it somewhere before…

“Hey, buddy, you seen any heroes around here?” the slightly nasally voice asked as it drew closer, but Jak was too focused on trying to place where he knew that voice from to focus on the actual words being spoken. He bristled when he felt a warm…something land on his chest – a hand, maybe? – but as long as he was shackled to this table he couldn’t do a thing about it. “ _Whoa_! What’d they do to _you_?” the voice asked incredulously as another hand joined the first.

“ _Jak_ , it’s _me_! Daxter!”

 _Daxter_.

Daxter was _dead_.

How dare…whoever this was torment him like this? He tried to arch off of the table, break free, just pry his eyes open so he could see who it was he was going to sink his claws into, but Jak was weaker than he had thought. He slumped back down onto the table and tried to catch his breath, to gather his strength…

“Well, that’s a fine hello!” the imposter snapped irritably, sounding so much like his old friend that it ached. “I’ve been crawling around in this place, risking my tail, to save _you_!”

He would rip them to shreds. He would make them cry out in agony. He would tear at their flesh and throw their body into the bottomless pit that surrounded this Precursors-forsaken machine. How dare they taunt him like this?

“I’ve been lookin’ for you for two years!”

Was this Erol’s idea? Or was it the Baron’s? It didn’t matter; Jak would kill them both for this. He was going to break free and he was going to bathe in their blood and - .

The hands on his chest buried themselves in his prisoner’s uniform as the voice above him grew more desperate. “ _Say something_! Just this _once_!”

“ _I’M GONNA KILL PRAXIS!_ ” Jak roared with a ferocity that surprised even him. But it was true. He was going to hunt Praxis down and then Erol, too, as soon as he dealt with the poor fool they had sent in here to torment him. They had made a mistake by mocking him with Daxter’s death, and they would pay dearly. Rage the likes of which he didn’t know possible flooded through his system and crackled along his skin as vicious tentacles of Dark Eco. He was oblivious to the world around him. The voice was still speaking, but it only served to anger him more. Jak let himself drown in the rage, let it fill every single cell until he just couldn’t handle it anymore. With an inhuman roar, he released the built up Dark Eco within him and grinned maniacally when he heard his shackles buckle under the assault and fall to the floor.

He was free…

“Or, uh… _you_ could do it…” the voice muttered cautiously, with just the slightest hint of fear.

Grin still firmly in place, the demonic teen shakily pushed himself off of the metal table beneath him and stumbled onto unsteady legs. His Eco aura whipped and crackled around him like an angry storm, latching onto anything within reach and singeing it if it could. His claws itched to sink into flesh, his teeth ached to tear, and there was his victim standing not five feet away. Jak staggered closer, grin widening when he realized that his prey had nowhere to run. Blood red rage blinded his vision, made everything hazy, but he could see the way the sorry elf backed away in fear, held its hands in front of it as if that would really stop Jak.

“Jak? E-Easy, now. Easy, buddy. It’s…it’s your old pal, Daxter, remember?”

With a bellow of fury, Jak launched himself at the imposter and dragged them both to the harsh, metal floor. The elf didn’t even put up a fight! The enraged, Eco-infused elf pinned his victim to the floor with one hand and poised the other over the other elf’s face, ready to rend and tear and break. But something stopped him. Something made him hesitate. Because now that he was closer to his victim, he could see him more clearly than before. And the sight below him was eerily familiar.

 _… he would never forget Daxter’s fear-stricken face. Daxter had been looking at_ him _. He had looked at Jak with pure terror in his eyes, written in every line of his body…_

Jak narrowed his eyes and looked closer at the elf trembling beneath him. He knew this face…He knew those eyes, wide and bluer than the sea by Sandover. Hair like a fiery plume of yellow and red, shorter than Jak remembered but still held in check by the same familiar pair of goggles that Keira had made so many years ago. Front teeth larger than average poking out from under his top lip. Less baby fat than had been there before, more smooth lines and angles, but Jak knew this face. The memory of this face had haunted him every single night.

“ _Daxter_ …?”

No, it wasn’t possible; Daxter was _dead_. Yet the elf underneath him was very much alive, and his face wasn’t the only thing that had changed. The elf was taller than he remembered – might even be taller than Jak now. Wiry muscles existed where there had been nothing but skin and bone before. His familiar red tunic had been replaced by a sleeveless shirt of the same color that covered most of his neck. White pants had been swapped for a pair of black ones littered with dozens of little pockets. Boots similar to those worn by the Guards, but without the extra plating, had replaced his old sandals. He wasn’t the same kid who had sat next to Jak that fateful day two years ago, but Jak had changed as well. This was an older version of Daxter, but this was still _Daxter_ and that wasn’t _possible_.

Jak lurched away from the elf as if he had been burned, mind racing and heart caught in his throat. He watched warily, black eyes wide as saucers, as the young elf pushed himself off of the ground and brushed himself off. Any trace of fear in that eerily familiar face disappeared as the other teen, _Daxter_ , shot him a dirty scowl. “What the heck was that?! Some kind of thanks I get!”

Was Jak dreaming? No, he couldn’t be. He couldn’t remember the last time he had had a pleasant dream, something that hadn’t filled him with so much terror or hate (or both) that he had woken screaming and howling. Maybe Jak’s mind had finally, blissfully snapped and this was just a very vivid hallucination…A hallucination that had felt far too solid and warm and alive to be anything but real. Precursors, this was real. And Jak had spent all this time convinced that Daxter was dead. Erol had been so sickeningly smug the day he had announced that he had captured Daxter. Jak had been skeptical at first, but Erol had known too much for it to be some kind of ploy to get under Jak’s skin, had known things about Daxter that only Jak or someone close to him would have known.

But Erol had lied.

And Jak would find out how Erol had managed to find out so much about his friend and kill him for using it against him, but, for the time being, that wasn’t important. Because Daxter _was_ alive, this _was_ real, and his childhood friend was standing not five feet away from him eyeing him with a mixture of concern and elation and guilt.

“You alright there, buddy…? I’m uh…I’m sorry it took me so long…I – ack!”

He didn’t give his friend any time for apologizes; he didn’t need any. He yanked the fiery-haired teen to him and crushed him in a hug, huffing when he realized that the so-called scrawny elf had gained a few inches on him. But he supposed it was difficult to grow much when constantly chained to a metal table or forced to live in a cramped cell with barely enough to eat. This was just proof that Daxter had been outside, had hopefully been safe and had been able to take care of himself. The pale teen let his Dark Eco aura run wild, let it crackle along Daxter’s skin with a mind of its own. That he didn’t hear screams of agony was the final confirmation that this really was his Daxter. Jak had almost _killed_ him. He had been ready to bury his claws in Daxter’s face, and he wouldn’t have stopped until there was nothing left but bone. The violence of Jak’s thoughts didn’t faze him, but the thought of how close he’d been to doing that to _Daxter_ made him tighten his grip until he swore he could hear bones creak.

“Yea, yea, good to see you to, tough guy! But could you stop tryin’ to snap me in half?” Daxter staggered unsteadily when Jak suddenly dropped him and tried to rub feeling back into his arms, but he was grinning from ear to ear. “Now I’d love to stand around and shoot the breeze – really, I would – but we’re sorta pressed for time, so I suggest we get the heck outta here. I, uh, brought you some new threads. Put ‘em on.”

Daxter reached down and picked up a backpack that Jak hadn’t noticed before and handed it to him. It didn’t take Jak any convincing for him to swap outfits. Hygiene or the prisoners’ comfort hadn’t been on the Baron’s priority list, and the only time he had ever gotten something clean to wear was when the torture had finally reduced what he’d been wearing into irredeemable rags. Jak pulled the grimy, discolored shirt over his head and tossed it into the black abyss next to him without a second thought, not caring where it landed. He was halfway through pulling on the long-sleeved blue shirt Daxter had brought for him when he heard a pained hiss and spun around, claws bared and aura crackling, but Daxter was just standing there, staring at him with wide, disbelieving eyes.

“Hm? Oh, don’t mind me! Pretend like I’m not even here…” Daxter drawled airily as he carelessly folded his arms over his stomach and turned around. But Jak had seen the look in Daxter’s eyes. He had seen the flash of pain, horror, rage, and guilt before the younger teen had looked away. Jak didn’t have to ask to know what had upset his friend. His body was a tangled mess of jagged scars, burns, needle marks, incisions, and who knew what else. Some caused by cruel Guards, some by unfeeling scientists, and most by Erol’s sadism. He wondered, as he changed into the rest of the outfit Daxter had brought, if he would still face Erol tonight.

Earlier the thought had filled him with glee. He had been waiting for ages to give the conceited, twisted elf exactly what he deserved. And he still longed to, and would if given the chance, but the game had changed. Jak wasn’t alone anymore. He hadn’t cared what would have happened to him after he had killed Erol and the Baron. Let the Guards swarm him and take him down – it wouldn’t have mattered as long as he had taken those two with him and made them suffer before they went. But he couldn’t be careless now. Jak had just been given his best friend back, had been handed a chance at freedom, and he wasn’t going to waste it.

So he would postpone his revenge. For now, at least.

Other than the blue shirt, the younger teen had gotten him a pair of beige pants almost like his old ones, though these were slightly longer. A thick pair of brown boots replaced the tattered rag-like sandals issued to long term prisoners, and fingerless blue gloves now covered his hands. A wave of nostalgia crashed over Jak as he pulled a steel ring almost identical to the one he used to wear across his chest out of the backpack, as well as three leather belts to hold it up. The metal spaulder and vambrace tucked away in the bottom of the pack were so similar to his old ones that he might have believed they were, if he hadn’t known that the Guards had taken all of his things. But buried in the very bottom of the bag, caught in a fold in such a way that Jak had almost missed him completely, were an eerily familiar pair of goggles.

“I know they ain’t the old ones but…they’re close, right?” At some point Daxter had turned back around and was watching him anxiously, waiting for his reaction. The goggles weren’t his old ones, not the ones that Keira had made for him the same year she had made Daxter’s, but they were similar. An abnormally large, bright red lens on the right side, and a smaller lens – almost too small to see through – on the left. He strapped them on over the red prison-issued cowl that kept his mane of hair in check and actually smiled when a piece of himself that had been missing clicked into place. It was a battered, rusty smile, but it was still there nonetheless.

“They’re perfect,” Jak answered, voice hoarse and raw from only being used for screaming and cursing. Daxter opened his mouth and closed it again a few times, as if he was dying to say or ask something but wasn’t entirely sure how to do it, before swallowing and giving up. Instead, he placed his hands on his still nonexistent hips and gave the demonic teen a onceover before nodding sagely.

“Not bad. Not bad at all. Not as good-lookin’ as me, of course, but some things just can’t be helped.”

This moment seemed so surreal. Perhaps it was starting to sink in that this wasn’t some extremely vivid dream or hallucination, but that didn’t make the situation any less incredible. Somehow Daxter had managed to find out exactly where Jak was being held, break into this prison – presumably by himself, sneak past all of the Guards on duty, and make it to the most secure sector of the building without being caught. He had always believed that his young friend was capable of a lot more than he gave himself credit for, but it seemed that even Jak had been guilty of underestimating the gangly elf – just a little bit. “Daxter, _how_ -.”

“I’ll explain everything when our lives aren’t in peril,” Daxter interrupted as he glanced warily around the room, especially toward the deactivated warp gate in the corner. He steered them toward the other side of the room where a pile of supply crates rested rather conveniently under a rather large air vent. “Come on, Jak – we’re outta here!”

The next few moments passed in a bit of a disbelieving haze. Opening the air vent was as simple as Jak wrapping his clawed fingers around and yanking as hard as he could. The grate clattered noisily to the floor as the two teens scrambled into the vent. Daxter, who seemed to somehow know where he was going, stayed in front. The glow from Jak’s Dark Eco aura kept them out of the dark until they reached the end of the vent, where artificial light was leaking through another grate. This one was taken care of in the same prudent manner. Jak climbed out of the vent to find himself in a storeroom of some sort with piles and piles of supply crates as high as the ceiling stacked in almost every available space. The two teens had almost managed to climb to another air vent near the ceiling when the inevitable happened and the alarms went off.

Daxter cursed and scrambled to pick up the pace, but Jak was grinning behind him. He wondered who had discovered he was gone. He could just imagine Erol swaggering into the room with some long-winded monologue planned, expecting to see Jak still lying there helpless. Jak would love to see how the elf’s face twisted in shock, horror, and outrage when he realized he had broken free. The arrogant elf probably would feel more indignant than actually afraid or upset, miffed that his plaything for the past two years had run out on him. He wouldn’t start to worry until it really hit him that Jak wasn’t behind bars anymore. Nothing stood between Jak and Erol now but maybe a few yards and weak armor that Jak could rip through in seconds. Jak could take his revenge now, it would only take maybe a few minutes and he would-.

“Hey, Earth to Jak! You comin’ or what?” Jak snapped back to attention when a hand abruptly waved in his face. He snatched the pale appendage with a snarl and was about to crush it into an unrecognizable pulp when he realized who exactly it was attached to. Daxter watched him carefully with a raised eyebrow and a hint of fear – though if that fear was the result of their situation or caused by Jak, the older teen didn’t know. “We need to get outta here! This place is gonna be crawlin’ with KG any second!”

Jak nodded reluctantly and the two teens were off again, dashing closer and closer toward freedom. The pale teen had to remember that. He couldn’t let his thirst for blood and revenge get in the way of their escape. If the two of them got caught, Jak had no doubt that Erol would take out his anger out on Daxter. Every lie Erol had ever spun about how he had tortured and tormented the spirited elf would be made true, and the soldier would make Jak _watch_ and he couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t put Daxter in that kind of danger. He wouldn’t go back, but he would save all his pent-up bloodlust for whatever lied ahead.

Jak literally itched to spill blood, and, for the first time in what might have been years, that fact actually worried him. He hadn’t had to worry about holding himself back while he was imprisoned. He had never been able to do that much damage anyway with the Guards constantly watching his every move, ready to zap him if he so much as blinked the wrong way. He had just let his hatred boil without worrying about the consequences, because there hadn’t been any. But twice now he had almost hurt Daxter and had only just barely stopped himself in time. The thought of Erol getting his hands on Daxter was horrifying enough, but what if Jak snapped out of a blood haze and it wasn’t Erol lying dead at his feet or some nameless Krimzon Guard, but Daxter?

For the first time in months, Jak felt a spike of real fear.


	3. Chapter 3

Despite the fact that the whole prison was apparently on high alert, the two teens didn’t run into anyone else for quite some time. The halls Daxter led them through were eerily empty and silent save for the wail of the alarm and the sound of their footsteps. Rather than fill Jak with any sort of comfort, the fact only set the horned teen’s nerves on edge. These halls should have been filled with the thundering of dozens of Krimzon Guards’ boots and angry yells, and their absence was more ominous than comforting. His senses heightened, enhanced by Dark Eco, and these senses allowed him to pick up the echoes of a conversation down the hall and around the corner long before Daxter would have heard them. Jak quickly grabbed the back of Daxter’s shirt, yanked him back, and pressed a clawed finger to his lips before the younger elf could accidentally give them away with one of his loud protests.

“Seen anything yet?” a muffled voice echoed down the hall - the voice of a Krimzon Guard wearing a full face mask, and he wasn’t alone.

“Nah,” another Guard replied, his voice a mixture between relieved and disappointed. “But can you believe that it actually got out?”

“I’m just surprised it took so long for that thing to bust loose,” the first Guard spat in disgust. “I don’t know what the Baron was thinking keeping that Dark Eco freak around. It’s not like they got anything useful out of it, anyway. If you ask me, they should’ve put that monster down as soon as they found it.”

“Yea, well, nobody _asked you_ ,” Daxter hissed venomously under his breath, fidgeting in Jak’s loose hold. “Come on, Jak. If we double back, maybe we can find a way to slip around ‘em.”

But Daxter’s words were drowned out by the rushing of blood in Jak’s ears. Maybe he couldn’t take his revenge on Praxis right now, maybe he had had to let Erol go, but Jak had his limits. He had all of this _rage_ and _hate_ and _bloodlust_ whipping around inside of him like a hurricane, stirred up by the elation that came with freedom, and he needed to get it _out_. If he didn’t…he didn’t know what he’d do. He didn’t want to _know_ what he’d do, because there was every chance that he could snap at the wrong place at the wrong time on the wrong person…

Jak stared his friend in the eye and tried to convey everything he was feeling, tried to express all of the terrible emotions that were eating him up inside without words. Because there were no words that could ever really express how Jak felt like he _needed_ to go around the corner and rip those Guards limb from limb and make them scream that would make this okay.

“Wait here.” He didn’t want Daxter to follow him. He didn’t want him to see. And maybe it didn’t make any sense - it wasn’t as if Daxter hadn’t seen him kill before - but somehow this was different.

Jak could feel Daxter’s eyes on his back long after he’d turned the corner and faced the two Guards. The younger elf had remained strangely silent and Jak couldn’t tell if that was a good sign or a bad one. He didn’t give himself time to dwell on it. The Guards had quickly noticed him, and they had already raised their weapons and were ready to fire. They wouldn’t go down without a fight, and the thought only exhilarated the pale-skinned elf. With a feral grin, Jak let himself descend into the madness stewing in the back of his mind and charged forward.

After that, the rest of their escape was nothing but a blur of red. The red haze of anger that nearly blinded him, the red of the Krimzon Guard's uniforms, and the red of warm elven blood. Jak had enough wits left about him to recognize that Daxter was not a threat and let the younger teen point him in the right direction, but other than that the tortured elf surrendered to the bloodlust that had simmered unchecked within him for the past two years. Jak couldn’t have restrained himself even if he’d wanted to. Maybe later he would think back on his actions with shame and disgust, but for now every strangled scream of fear and pain he managed to rip from a Guard’s throat was pure music to his ears.

Eventually, their running came to an end. The last air vent dumped them into some dank, flooded supply room that didn’t look like it had been used in years. After all the fighting and yelling and sirens, this room seemed almost eerily silent. The dripping of water leaking from the ceiling echoed around them, strangely soothing. Jak leant up against a pile of crates and caught his breath, let his mind clear. He felt… _good_ – better than he had in ages. The pale teen felt lighter, less angry and saner now that he had gotten some of the pent up violence out of his system. There was a small part of him that shrank away in horror at what he’d done, that mourned for the loss of life, but it was nearly crushed under the weight of morbid satisfaction.

Nearly, until he glanced at Daxter. The younger boy stood a few feet away leaning on another pile of crates with one hand. The other hand was buried in his yellow-red hair. The teen wasn’t looking at Jak and the older teen frowned at his friend’s back, wondering what the other elf was thinking. What did Daxter think of Jak now? What had he been thinking while he’d listened to Jak cut through Krimzon Guards as if they’d been no more than pesky Lurker rats? How could he stand to be within 50 feet of him after what he’d done?

There was a time when Jak hadn’t even had to look at his friend’s expression to be able to tell how he was feeling. More often than not, Daxter’s body language and the noises he made were more than enough. But time had passed, and both of them had changed. There was tension in the flame-haired elf that hadn’t been there before, a harried edge to his posture that he couldn’t quite manage to hide behind his familiar mask of humor. There was a time when Jak would have known exactly what to do to reassure his friend, to cheer him up and make him smile, but now he wasn’t sure he trusted himself to try. The lighthearted boy from Sandover, with the lemon-lime hair and carefree smile, seemed like a fanciful dream from an eon ago.

Jak stared down at his hands, clothed in the gloves that Daxter had brought for him and now covered in the blood of elves just like him and Daxter. He had dreamed about this moment, about somehow breaking free and spilling the blood of every last Guard and scientist in this forsaken place, but Daxter had never been a fixture in any of these dark fantasies. Even if he hadn’t thought the other teen dead, Daxter would have been out of place. Daxter was…

Daxter was smiling at him when he dared to look back up and, though the grin was a bit wobbly and tense, it seemed genuine. And yet, despite his smile, he couldn’t hide the flash of fear in his eyes. Fear that Jak knew he had caused. Jak didn’t understand how the other teen could stand there and look at him, covered in blood as he was, and still be able to _smile_ like that – like nothing had changed between them, like _Jak_ hadn’t changed – but he supposed there were just some things he would never understand about Daxter no matter how long he knew him.

“Got that outta your system?” Daxter asked with a raised eyebrow. “‘Cause, uh, there’s gonna be just a _tiny_ bit of a problem if you go apeshit over every KG you see outside. The streets are crawlin’ with ‘em. I mean, don’t get me wrong – I hate ‘em as much as the next guy…”

 _Outside_ …

“Anyway,” Daxter rolled his shoulders as he came closer, a calculating look on his face that Jak wasn’t sure really belonged there or not. But anything was better than fear. “Before we can go frolicking in your newfound freedom, we gotta make sure you won’t send the whole city into a panic.”

In the end, there wasn’t all that much they could do about Jak’s rather demonic appearance. The blood at least wasn’t too much of a problem – according to Daxter, this was a very violent city and a guy walking around covered in blood honestly wouldn’t prove all that shocking. His new goggles easily hid his unnatural black eyes, but his pale, almost grey complexion, horns and claws presented a problem. If anyone asked any funny questions, they could say that Jak’s complexion was caused by some sort of illness, and maybe they could attribute the nails to eccentricity, but how did you explain two black bones growing out of someone’s skull? And, for that matter, how did you explain away the crackling aura of Dark Eco that clung to Jak like a second skin?

For the horns, Daxter made due by retying Jak’s cowl around his head sort of like a bandana. It didn’t hide the horns completely, but it made them less obvious and Daxter was hoping that the cover of night would make them even less obvious until they could think of something better. As for the Dark Eco, if Jak didn’t find some sort of way to suppress his aura, it would only be a matter of time before the Krimzon Guard were onto him. All they’d have to do was follow the trail of screaming, terrified citizens. He had been figuring out how to supress it by himself back at Sandover, but it had been two years since he’d tried it and he had been a different person back then. Even though he’d still had the anger and the bloodlust, there’d still been some measure of control. He had had the urge to kill but he hadn’t _wanted_ to, not really. But now?

“This is just like that time at Gol and Maia’s place,” Daxter grinned suddenly, snapping his fingers. “When we had to piss you off to get your Dark Eco mojo flowin’. You just need to think of something… _calming_. _Relaxing_. Like, I dunno…naked babes on the beach!”

That startled an amused huff out of Jak – not much of a laugh but more than he’d done in longer than he could remember. No, that image wasn’t particularly calming. The only ‘babe’ Jak had ever known had been Keira, and the green-haired mechanic was like a sister to him. Thinking of her only made him wonder how she was doing and if she was still alive. If Daxter had managed to get by in this horrible world for two years, than surely Keira and Samos had as well. Maybe the younger teen even knew where they were!

But these thoughts, though a weight off Jak’s shoulders, still weren’t _calming_. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been calm. Even back in Sandover he hadn’t exactly been the most relaxing person to hang around, always looking for the next thrill or adventure. He had been restless then and Jak was even worse off now that he had this bloodthirsty itch under his skin. But if he didn’t think of _something_ , he would just be dragged back into this Precursors-forsaken prison. If Daxter was right and the streets were swarming with Guards, then it would only be a matter of time before they killed Jak or threw him back into prison to be Erol’s plaything again. He’d take down as many Guards as he could, but he wouldn’t be able to fight them forever and he would have to worry about protecting Daxter as well.

No, none of this was particularly calming…What had always calmed him down when he was younger?

Honestly, it didn’t take long to figure out. The answer stood right next to him. Daxter somehow always managed to be the answer. Jak could remember warm nights after another hair-raising adventure or run through the jungle temple, after the adrenaline rush had long since worn off, spent lounging on the beach watching the odd green star inch across the night sky. He could remember the roar of waves crashing against the stone sentinels, the smell of grass and sea salt, the cry of gulls who hadn’t settled down for the night, the creak of water wheels perpetually turning. He could remember Daxter babbling about everything and nothing, gossiping about the villagers and groaning about whatever Samos had made them do that day. Sometimes the younger teen would make up stories about the green star, what it was and how it had gotten there. It seemed like a lifetime ago since they’d last done that, but Jak could remember everything.

“You good?” Daxter smirked at him knowingly, and Jak realized with a start that his aura was…well, not _gone_ , but no longer stretching out in a four foot radius. It had retracted and settled down somewhat, only setting off a whip of Dark Eco every so often instead of every second. Jak still thought he was completely conspicuous, but he didn’t particularly want to wait any longer. Freedom was apparently only a few feet away, through an opening near the ceiling. He didn’t know what it was used for, or why the Guard had left it wide open, but he didn’t care. Jak couldn’t see the sky from here, couldn’t smell the night air, but he could imagine it. He could imagine what it would be like not having these thick metal walls surrounding him, hemming him in, crushing him until there was nothing left…That thought was enough for Jak to get enough of a hold of himself to squash down the rest of aura, until just the barest tendril of Eco lashed out scarcely noticeable in the dark. It wasn’t as if the boiling tempest of emotions within him had suddenly evaporated – it still raged within him like wumpbees swarming under his skin – but, at least for now, he had a very fragile grip on it. Jak could hold himself back long enough for them to get somewhere safe…he hoped. He couldn’t let this opportunity slip just because he couldn’t manage his anger.

The pale elf climbed the stack of damp boxes next to the window and hauled himself onto the ledge. He barely spared a cursory glance down below for Guards before throwing himself out and down to the street. A thick layer of sand or dust softened his landing and shifted with every step he took away from the prison. There were a few other elves out on the street that night, and they glanced suspiciously at him from the corner of their eyes, but none of them wore the infamous red Krimzon Guard armor and they all gave Jak a wide berth. If they thought it strange or alarming that someone had apparently just escaped from the prison, they wisely kept this to themselves, kept their heads down, and walked just a little bit faster. Jak heard Daxter follow him a few seconds later, and then a boney fist punched him softly in the shoulder. Thankfully for Daxter, the older teen was either still calm enough not to accidentally rip his arm off, or he was just too stunned to pay that much attention. Jak couldn’t call the night sky beautiful. Rather than the pure, dark cerulean that had painted the sky over Sandover, the sky above this city was a strange, muddy mix of dark bluish-green mixed with brown. Smoke billowing up from the city blocked out most of it, but Jak could see the green star in the distance, peering behind what could have been a cloud or a particularly thick bit of smoke. None of that mattered, though, when the reality was that he stood under open _sky_.

“We’re _free_ , Jak, thanks to _me_! Nice to breathe some fresh air, huh?” ‘Fresh’ was another relative term, but Jak wasn’t going to complain about that either. He had nothing to complain about. If not for Daxter, Jak would most certainly have been dead by now. Instead he was standing here, in this ramshackle, dusty looking city next to his best friend, who was very much _alive_ and real. This time when he turned to smile at Daxter, he grinned openly, fangs and all. Neither of them noticed the elderly elf standing down the street, watching them with narrowed eyes. He didn’t fit in with any of the other elves milling about the streets almost as if they were in a haze. Rather than the drab browns and tans worn by the other elves, the old elf wore hooded, vibrant blue robes that appeared to be well taken care of. Silvery-white hair poured down his back and covered his gaunt cheeks. He seemed almost regal, standing proudly in the middle of the street clutching a staff not unlike a king might hold a scepter. He watched the two strangers walk down the street, the shorter of the two gazing about him with what could have been awe, though the old elf couldn’t see what was so awe-inspiring about this dump of a city.

“Hello, strangers,” the elf called, stepping forward to greet them. He frowned when the shorter one, a disturbingly pale young elf, walked right past him. Not one to be ignored, the elf reached out and placed an arm on the pale stranger’s arm to try and stop him. “My name is Kor. May I help – ah!”

An inhuman snarl ripped from the stranger’s throat as the elderly man’s hand was suddenly caught. He thought that maybe this was what it would feel like to have his hand crushed between two gears, slowly squeezing until there was nothing left but dust and pulp. Little flashes of lightning flickered off of the stranger, the deep purple of Dark Eco, and behind the stranger’s goggle Kor thought he might have glimpsed the black emptiness of the abyss…

“Alright, break it up, break it up!” a grating, nasally voice suddenly shouted as a slightly taller elf with the most vibrant hair Kor had seen in a long time stepped forward. The people of Haven City all had hair in dull shades of browns, blondes, reds, and black, but this teenager had hair like a fiery plume of yellow and red. Kor would have thought it dyed if he didn’t know that almost no one could afford such a luxury. The teen attempted to push him and the pale stranger apart, but he really only succeeded in shoving Kor back a few paces. At least he had his hand back…though it would be a while before he could actually feel it again “Sorry about that…”

“No harm done…” Kor muttered, eyeing the two elves warily.

The pale stranger eyed him right back, his aggression only barely held in check by the hesitant hand placed on his shoulder by his loudmouthed friend. “You seem like a reasonably smart man. I want information. Where the hell am I?”

“Well, my angry young friend,” Kor replied sarcastically as he brushed off his robes with no small amount of disdain. These elves needed to learn respect… “You are a _guest_ of his _majesty_ , Baron Praxis, the ruler of _glorious_ Haven City.”

Scorn and digust dripped off of every word. The old elf held no reservations about speaking his mind. He hated the Baron with a white-hot passion, perhaps more so than others, and it seemed that the young stranger shared this hatred. It practically rolled off of him in waves. “I was just a ‘guest’ in the good Baron’s prison.”

“Inside a cell or inside a city, walls surround his both. We are all his prisoners…” Kor trailed off as the thunder of several pairs of combat boots stomping more or less in time approached from behind, and he turned to see a pack of Krimzon Guards headed their way. That was never a good sign, especially with guns already drawn. Krimzon Guards typically patrolled the streets alone, and to see a group like this never heralded anything good. “Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time…I-Id move on, if I were you…”

Behind him, the violent stranger tensed like drawn bow, like a Peacemaker ready to be fired, as the Guards drew closer. “By order of his eminence, the Grand Protector of Haven City, Baron Praxis, everyone in this sector is hereby under arrest for suspicion of harboring underground fugitives,” the Guard in front barked once he was within earshot of the uneasy crowd that had started to form at their arrival. “Surrender and die!”

“Aaah, excuse me, sir,” the fiery-haired elf actually took a step toward the Guards, seemingly unafraid of the armed and deadly elves. Either he somehow remained unaware of the infamous brutality of the Krimzon Guard, or he was a complete idiot. “But don’t you mean surrender OR DIE?!”

“Not in this city…” Kor protested, backing away from the Guards as quickly as he could hobbling on his walking stick. Even the loudmouthed teenager shuffled away warily, but the pale stranger took an aggressive step forward. More tongues of Dark Eco lashed out around him like a cloak of lethal tentacles. The boy’s fingers - were those _claws_? - twitched at his sides, as if he were actually eager for a fight. This could prove interesting... “Protect us from these Guards, and I’ll introduce you to someone who can help you!”

The Guards chose that moment to attack, charging forward with their guns raised. The resulting fight…no. Calling it a fight implied that the Guards had some small chance of winning. In reality, it was nothing more than a bloodbath, but Kor still found it enjoyable to watch. The elderly elf could appreciate power and strength, valued it greatly in fact, and it pained him that his frail and failing body limited him so much. He’d make do, though, by watching this pale youth dart in and out of the mob of Krimzon Guards with the speed and grace of a seasoned warrior, a natural killer. Fully grown men in the finest armor dropped like weak, pathetic flies before him.

Honestly, it was beautiful. Kor chuckled under his breath as the citizens of Haven City began to scream and run, terrified of the creature of Dark Eco tearing their so-called ‘protectors’ to shreds. They should have been cheering him on! Finally, someone who could stand up to the Krimzon menace that tormented them each and every day, and they reacted with fear. Only the other teenager remained, looking on with the slack-jawed, horrified expression of someone who was witnessing a train wreck and unable to look away. When the massacre finally ended, the pale teen stood in the middle of a pile of carcasses, panting heavily and scowling despite his victory. When Kor glanced again at the other teen, his horrified expression had been wiped away almost as if it had never been there at all.

“Very impressive…” Kor complimented the violent, pale-skinned elf. He could compliment true artistry when he saw it. “What you just did was very brave. This child is important.”

He gestured to the young boy who had been hiding behind his robes the entire time, shy by nature and frightened by all of the bloodshed. He, too, was an anomaly among the peoples of Haven City. His hair was a vibrant green the likes of which simply did not exist, and he had somehow managed to cling to the innocence of childhood when all other children his age had already long since become jaded by the world. The fiery-haired teenager frowned at the child and crouched down to get a better look at him. He peered at him longer than Kor really liked, a strange spark of something almost like nostalgia flashing through his eyes before he snorted and stood back up. “This kid? He looks kinda scruffy.”

The three elves paused as a Hellcat Cruiser flew past the alleyway, and they all breathed collective sighs of relief when the Krimzon Guard behind the wheel didn’t notice the pile of his fallen comrades. That luck wouldn’t last for long, however.

“Thank you for your help, but I must get this boy to safety,” Kor took the young child by the hand and began to hobble out of the alleyway, but that grating voice, like nails on a chalkboard, stopped him.

“Hey! What about _us_?”

“There is an underground group waging war against Baron Praxis,” he threw over his shoulder. “Its leader, the Shadow, could use fighters like you. Find a dead-end alley near the city wall. Ask for Torn. He can help you…”

Kor pondered on his meeting with the two elves as he walked away and disappeared into the night. The pale elf hadn’t been at all what he’d expected, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It simply meant that the next few months would prove far more entertaining than he had been hoping. It was almost a shame that the Dark Eco child would have to die.

Jak kept his eyes on the elderly elf’s back until he had disappeared around the corner, and even then his nerves still wouldn’t settle down. One thing Jak had always been able to trust was his gut feeling about things, and every instinct he had told him that Kor was trouble. Jak would have to keep an eye on him if they ever ran into each other again. He was pulled from his thoughts when Daxter suddenly let out an unnecessarily loud yawn as he shut his eyes stretched his arms over his head.

“Man! I dunno about you, but I’ve had enough excitement for one day! We can fight the Man all you want, tomorrow. I got a place where we can crash. It’s not much, but it’s got all the comforts of home.”

_Home…?_

“Daxter…?”

“Hmmm?” Daxter paused mid-stretch to lazily glance at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Thanks.” Jak didn’t think he would ever be able to say that enough, let alone repay Daxter for what he’d done for him.

Daxter let his arms swing to his sides and grinned again, and, unlike all the others, this one was free of any trace of fear or anxiety or forced humor. This one was 100% Daxter. “No problem, tough guy. But you owe me, big time! I’m talkin’ life debts and firstborns, here. And, um…do something about that lightning stuff, wouldja? Your homicidal is showing.”


	4. Chapter 4

Time was one of those funny things that liked to make up its own rules. Not funny like ‘haha,’ but more funny like…a pain in the ass. Ten minutes spent waiting in line might take just as long as ten minutes catching up with a good friend, but they didn’t _feel_ the same. An hour spent behind a desk filling out paperwork felt a long longer than an hour spent watching a Zoomer race from the front row. An afternoon lounging on the beach was a breeze in comparison to an afternoon spent stuck in traffic. Two years could be a blink of an eye for some, could drag on forever for others. For Daxter, two years felt like an eternity in hell.

Assuming there was a hell, of course, because no one was 100% sure. But if there was a hell, Daxter was pretty sure that it would pale in comparison to life in Haven City. The place was a dump, hands down, and the Sandover native couldn’t understand how the locals could stand it. Despite the fact that there was open sky above him, he still felt claustrophobic with all those blocky buildings looming over him and the ever present smog cloud constantly blotting out the sun. The water was foul, the air was foul, the food…well, the food was actually pretty good, but there never was enough to go around. And being surrounded by so many unfamiliar faces made him twitchy. It didn’t help that the elves around here weren’t exactly the friendliest bunch. Every one of them had a hard, cutthroat glint in their eyes, and those Krimzon Guards were the worst.

But Daxter could have dealt with all of this easily, if it weren’t for one tiny, little, almost insignificant thing.

He had lost Jak.

Those first few minutes after he had been spat out of the Rift Gate were a bit of a blur. Daxter had landed in a pile of crates, which hadn’t really broken his fall much at all, but at least he had landed in an alley and not out in the open where people would have gawked at him. Head pounding, world spinning, the teen had shakily gotten to his feet and looked around blearily, trying to figure out why he saw two of everything. He remembered shaking his head to try to clear it and turning to inform Jak about how much he _hated_ the Precursors and all of their stupid, _useless_ inventions…but Jak hadn’t been there. The pale, pointy, glowing, easy-to-spot teenager hadn’t been anywhere in the alleyway. He hadn’t been out in the street, either, or around the corner, or down the block, or anywhere else Daxter had looked.

There had been plenty of other elves around, sure, but none of them were familiar. They eyed him suspiciously and backed away from him warily the more frantic he became. He didn’t dare ask them for help looking for Jak. Daxter could just tell that these folks were real jumpy, and asking them if they’d seen a homicidal, demonic-looking, Eco-soaked elf with an anger management problem would have just been asking for trouble. But questions about Keira had gotten nothing but blank, unfriendly stares, and apparently the idea of a green-skinned floating Eco Sage was completely ludicrous. By the time the sun had set, Daxter had still not seen hide nor hair of Keira, Samos, or Jak, and he had had to face the fact that he might be completely and utterly alone.

Those first few weeks had been hard. Daxter had never been _alone_ before, not really. He had always been able to rely on Jak for anything, and on Keira and Samos as well if he needed to, and even on the other villagers. But suddenly now all Daxter had to rely on was himself. It didn’t take him long to learn that the citizens of Haven City would rather watch him starve to death in a ditch and search his pockets than offer him the tiniest bread crumb, let alone a place to sleep for the night. With no money to his name and nothing worth selling, the citizens of Haven City had quickly deemed him not worth their time. At first Daxter had resented them for it, but now he could see where they came from. They barely had enough to support themselves and their battered families - why should they spare anything for a stranger like him?

So Daxter had had to hone a few unsavory skills in order to get by. Nothing was better than the five finger discount, right? It turned out Daxter was pretty good at sneaking around unseen when he had an empty, angry stomach to motivate him, and if someone wanted to buy some of the junk he’d stolen, all the better for him! And while he stole and sold and curled up in dark, dusty corners for the night, he kept an eye open and an ear cocked for word about Jak and the others. Not a second went by that Daxter didn’t think about them. How was the old log coping in a place where green life didn’t seem to exist? What did Keira think about about all of the strange technology these elves used every day? Was Jak alright, and did he did he feel as hopelessly lost without Daxter as Daxter felt without him?

Weeks passed. Obnoxiously hot, dry, bitter weeks spent carving out a niche for himself in Haven City, of avoiding the scrutiny of the infamous Krimzon Guards and uselessly searching for his friends when he could. He just hoped they were lost somewhere in the sectors of the city he didn’t have access to, and not in some other world entirely. Daxter didn’t know what he’d do then.

But then one day he had heard a rumor. A couple of elves passing through from the Red District hadn’t been quite as discrete about their gossiping as they should have been. Daxter had heard them whispering about the pale, feral elf the guards had captured a few months back, but he hadn’t been the only one. It wasn’t ling before the KG were escorting them off the streets, never to be heard from again. As bad as he felt for them, Daxter had just been ecstatic to hear any sort of news about Jak. After weeks of running around lost, alone, and beginning to lose hope, he finally knew where Jak was. Sure, he had found out that his best buddy had apparently been locked up, but all Daxter had to do was find some way to bust him out of there. It couldn’t be _that_ hard, right?

…right?

It had been the hardest thing Daxter had ever done. He had devoted every single waking moment to finding out where exactly Jak was being held and devising a way to sneak in undetected, break him loose, and get the heck out of dodge. After months of planning, pouring over ill-gotten blueprints and floor plans, and bargaining with whatever benevolent supernatural beings might be listening, Daxter had finally felt as ready as he could be, considering he planned to break into a prison so fortified that even Gol and Maia would have turned tail and run. He’d thought he’d prepared for just about everything. He had learned the guard rotations and knew them by heart, he had brought as many supplies as he could comfortably carry, he had even brought Jak a change of clothes. There was just one thing that Daxter hadn’t really prepared for – Jak himself.

Daxter hadn’t known what he would find locked away in the Baron’s prison. He hadn’t even known if Jak would still be _alive_. After two years of living in Haven City, Daxter had heard plenty about the horrors that went on in that prison – people went in, but they never, ever came back out. But he _had_ to believe that Jak was still alive. Daxter couldn’t let his pessimism and fear get the best of him, because Jak had been one of the few things that had kept him going all this time. When the nights had gotten unbearably lonely, when food had gotten scarce, when the stares of passersby had grown particularly malevolent, he had asked himself, ‘What would Jak do?’ He never usually _did_ what he’d imagined Jak would do (something as simple as a broken leg would be a death sentence in a place like this), but just thinking about his friend was usually enough to get him out of whatever funk was afflicting him at the time. Daxter felt no shame in admitting that Jak was his better half because it was the absolute truth, and without him the world felt…like a giant gaping maw that was trying to swallow him whole. But things would get better once he found Jak – that was one of the laws of nature. Birds flew, fish swam, and Jak made things better. Daxter would find Jak, and then maybe he could finally _breathe_ for a while…and then they would find Samos and Keira and go _home_. For two years, Daxter had managed to scrape by comforting himself with the fact that, after all this was over, they could all finally go back home.

But the Jak Daxter had found strapped down to what had looked like some sort of doomsday device had not been the same boy Daxter had left behind in Sandover. Jak had grown, for one. His silver hair had finally grown long enough that it could no longer defy the laws of gravity, and, unlike Daxter, puberty had decided to grace him with facial hair – an actual, full-fledged _goatee_ of all things. But even with these small changes, even dressed in that ratty prison uniform, Jak hadn’t looked very different. If he had been sprawled on their bed in his uncle’s house and not flopped on this metal slab, he might have looked like he was peacefully asleep and not in some sort of torture-induced coma. But there had been signs that not everything was quite right, even before Jak had opened his mouth. He had been thinner, much thinner, and there had been deep bags under his eyes. The parts of him that Daxter could see had been mottled with bruises of all shapes and sizes, and he didn’t want to think about how his friend had gotten them. He wouldn’t be able to get through this half-assed escape plot if he was freaking out.

The longer Jak had laid their unresponsive, though, the harder it had been for Daxter not to freak out. No matter what the younger teen said or how he pleaded, Jak would just not move. Not one twitch, not one spark of Dark Eco, and Daxter was too panicked to check to see if he was even _breathing_. He didn’t _want_ to check, because there was always that small possibility that _maybe he wasn’t breathing_.

But then the moment Daxter had been waiting for had arrived, and Jak had opened those big, disturbingly black eyes of his and (presumably) looked at him (because it was hard to tell sometimes when the guy didn’t have pupils and irises and such) and…he had spoken.

Several hours later, walking down the streets of Haven City with Jak following not half a step behind, Daxter still reeled from that little surprise. Jak _spoke_. Not a laugh, not a chuckle, not a grunt or a growl or a roar, but actual _words_ in an actual _sentence_. Jak’s silence had been something that had bugged Daxter for as long as he could remember. He could never understand why Jak had never spoken even though Samos had said that everything was working fine. As the years had gone by, Daxter had stopped trying to not so subtly convince his friend to talk and had grown used to the silence, filling it up instead with his own inane chatter, but he had always wondered what Jak would have sounded like. He would spend lazy afternoons running different voices through his head trying to find one that would fit his friend and never getting anywhere. He would wonder what the first thing Jak would ever say would be. He would wonder what his name would sound like when Jak said it…

But the first words Daxter had ever heard out of Jak’s mouth had been a proclamation of death, so full of rage and turmoil and hatred that it had almost sounded inhuman. Daxter had leapt back in shock and almost went toppling over the edge of the doomsday device’s platform, but he hadn’t had any time to process Jak’s broken silence. The Dark Eco aura that had been conspicuously absent suddenly surged to life with a violence Daxter had never seen before, lashing out at the machine and shattering the metal shackles that had tied Jak down. With a drunken grin that had looked disturbingly out of place on his friend’s face, the pale elf had slid off of the table and stumbled toward him, his claws stretched threateningly at his sides and an unhinged spark in the black abyss of his eyes that Daxter had never seen even in Jak’s most bloodthirsty moments. It was that glint that had paralyzed Daxter with fear, had made his heart lodge itself halfway up his throat and made him tremble so badly he could hardly stand up straight. Purple lightning flailed around the older elf like a hurricane, and though the snap of it against Daxter’s skin wasn’t exactly painful, it wasn’t pleasant either. He had quickly shuffled away when Jak started to prowl closer, unsure if Jak could even recognize him.

Even then, Daxter hadn’t expected Jak to _attack_ him. But the next thing he knew, he was pinned to the floor with multi-inch black talons of _death_ getting dangerously close to his left eye. He couldn’t even remember what he’d been thinking right then. What did you think about when the best friend you had been searching for for so long was about to kill you like you meant absolutely nothing to him?

“Where are we headed, Dax?” Daxter snapped out of his musings and smirked over his shoulder at the elf stalking behind him. ‘Stalking’ because, even though Jak’s gait was familiar, it now had the dark overtone of a predator ready, willing, and downright _eager_ to kill - and wasn’t that just all sports of terrifying... But Daxter wouldn’t let on that he was so petrified he could barely walk straight. He had been positive once that Jak would never hurt him, no matter how far off the deep end he went, and nothing had changed. So what if he had carved through dozens of elven guards with his bare hands and grinned maniacally as he had broken their bones and listened to them scream in agony? Jak had the right to want a little revenge; Daxter could respect this. From a distance. Preferably far away enough that Jak wouldn't hear him if he started to gag...

Two years ago, Jak would have been a mess after a massacre like that. He would have been wracked with guilt and horror, but the older teen had hardly batted an eyelash at the blood on his hands. Daxter had to wonder…what had happened to Jak to prison that had changed him so much?

“The most scenic bit of real estate in the whole city,” Daxter lied through his teeth. From Jak’s derisive snort, he could tell his friend had caught on to the sarcasm. “We’re just a stone’s throw away from a prime bit of beach.”

That last part not may or may not have been true. It was true that Daxter’s neighborhood practically hugged the beach, but he had never actually seen what it looked like over the giant metal wall that protected the city. He did wish he didn’t live so far away, though. The sooner they got Jak inside and away from the scrutinizing glares of pedestrians, the sooner Daxter could breathe. He was half-tempted to just ‘borrow’ a Zoomer, but hotwiring someone’s vehicle right now would draw too much attention. Instead he walked as quickly as he could without looking too suspicious and kept his mouth shut only to try and remain as inconspicuous as possible. The elves around here weren’t above ratting out their neighbors if they thought it would get the Krimzon Guards off their backs for a while.

The neighborhood where Daxter lived was, in the young teen’s opinion, probably the worst in the city. Tucked away in a corner of the slums was a flooded neighborhood made completely out of wooden and metal scrap. The ‘roads’ here were rickety wooden peers and docks repaired only when the holes in them had gotten too big for people to easily jump over. The water that lapped at the scrawny legs of the elevated buildings was brackish and a shade of brown that Daxter didn’t want to contemplate. Despite this, he had actually grown fond of the neighborhood and a few of the people in it. An old couple had lived here not long ago. Sometimes he’d slept under the metal awning above their door when it rained, and sometimes he would wake up with stale bread in his lap. Sometimes, when he could, Daxter would leave money under their tattered front mat.

He hadn’t even known their names, but they’d helped him out when they didn’t have to and it had hit him hard when they’d both mysteriously disappeared one day. Daxter didn’t know why the Krimzon Guard had taken them away - maybe they hadn’t paid their taxes - but from then on he had lost all respect for the KG, if he had had any left to begin with. He had felt bad about moving into their empty house, but at least this way their belongings would be relatively safe instead of left at the mercy of insensitive vultures. He was just…house-sitting until they came back.

The house was in the very, back tucked away next to the Wall. It was really nothing more than a glorified shack, just like all of the other houses. It took a while to open all seven locks on the door, but soon the two teens were ducking through the doorway and shutting Haven City behind them. While Daxter went to go light the single lantern on the solitary table with the weird, stumpy leg, Jak pushed up his goggles and glared at every nook and cranny as if he expected the dust to attack him. Away from the prying eyes of easily startled citizens, he loosened the leash on his Eco aura and let it snap and crackle around him, giving the single room an odd, purple glow. For once in his life, Daxter didn’t know what to say. If he was completely honest with himself, he hadn’t thought he’d be able to break Jak out at all. And yet here they were, against all odds, staring at each other from opposite sides of the room.

“This doesn't feel real, does it?” Jak asked with a huff-like laugh, breaking the silence. Yep, Daxter would have never have been able to imagine a voice like _that._ Deep and smooth and slightly rough. It suited this older, harder version of Jak.

“I’m a dream come true, right?” Daxter teased, some of the tension easing out of him as he slipped back into the familiarity of banter. It was different now knowing that Jak might actually talk back, not just shoot him an exasperated look or smack him over the back of the head. But even though Jak didn’t speak immediately, he didn’t do either if those things. Instead, he just stared at Daxter for a moment, expression softening as he finally stepped away from the door. He sat down on the cot tucked against the farthest wall, stared down at it for a moment like he had forgotten what comfort felt like (which, to be honest, he probably had, and Daxter would gladly take it upon himself to fix that), and then looked back at Daxter.

“How have you been, Daxter?” he asked softly.

How _was_ he? Daxter supposed he was alright. He had managed to survive for two years in this cesspool of a city on his own, had come through relatively unscathed, and had finally found Jak. All things considered, he was doing pretty well. Great, even! But still… “You know, I never thought I’d say this, but I sort of miss the villagers. I even miss that grump old log, though I _definitely_ don’t miss his staff!”

“So it’s just us?”

“Yea, but not that the dynamic duo is back together, finding the others should be a snap!” and Daxter believed that whole heartedly. Even if Jak was a little bit different, a little darker and certainly angrier, he was still Jak, and his mere presence was enough to make Daxter feel better. He hadn’t exactly been the most optimistic person these past two years, but he actually felt as if a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders that had been there so long he had started to forget it was there. Feeling lighter than he’d felt in ages, he didn’t think before grabbing a fruit from the crate by the table and tossing it to Jak. “Hungry?”

He probably should have thought a bit more about throwing random objects at Jak, though. The pale elf reacted on instinct, burying his claws into the oncoming projectile as if he thought the fruit would attack him. Dark Eco crackled menacingly for a moment before settling down, and Jak thankfully seemed more exasperated at his own actions rather than angry. But he tore into the fruit, nonetheless, eyes closing in an expression of bliss that was much better than the look of blinding rage that had been there not half a second before, if slightly distracting. Crisis averted. “I wouldn’t worry too much about them, though. This city’s a big place, and I don’t have access to even half of it. They’re out there somewhere. Maybe this ‘underground movement’ can help us find ‘em!”

Jak’s expression suddenly turned dark and cold as he glared down at the fruit in his hands. It didn’t take rocket science to figure out who else Jak wanted to find. He obviously had a score to settle with Baron Praxis. Daxter didn’t know how he felt about embarking on a crusade of revenge against the most powerful elf in Haven City, but if Jak was dead-set on doing it then Daxter was with him all the way. Daxter hadn’t been there for Jak when he had needed him the most. He didn’t know what he would have done if he had been captured, too; he didn’t know if his presence would have helped at all or if it was better that he had been out here to break Jak free from the outside. But every time he glanced at Jak and saw the furrows in his brow that had never been there before, every time Jak killed and satisfied not an uncontrollable bloodlust but a gaping sea of hatred blacker than his eyes, Daxter became drenched in a cold wave of guilt. Because maybe Jak wouldn’t be this way if he had managed to rescue him just a little bit faster. He’d keep that guilt hidden until the day he died, because Jak didn’t need to deal with that.

“Don’t worry. We’ll get that Baron Praxis guy, alright,” Daxter promised. And it helped that Daxter had a few bones to pick with Praxis as well. Every scar on Jak’s back, every bruise, every burn was etched into Daxter’s mind. He didn’t know if the Baron had made any of those marks himself, but he knew that they wouldn’t have been there if the Baron hadn’t wanted it. Daxter couldn’t imagine the pain Jak must have gone through acquiring every single one of those marks. He knew hunger, loneliness, and fear, but Daxter had never really known pain. Pain was only a fleeting sensation when Samos could heal just about anything with a wave of his hand, and he had done all he could to avoid getting hurt in this strange, unfriendly world.

But Jak’s scars...they spoke of constant and unending agony, of needless and sadistic torture. Someone was going to have to answer for whatever had happened to Jak in that hell of a prison. No one was allowed to hurt his Jak and get away with it.

_No one_.

“Okay,” Daxter somehow managed to say through a jaw-popping yawn. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d said he’d had enough excitement for one day. He’d literally been a bundle of nerves and anxiety waiting for this day, and every second slinking through the prison had been like an eternity in hell. Crouching behind crates, waiting for Krimzon Guards to pass him by and praying they couldn’t hear him breathe, crawling through what felt like miles upon miles of air vents paranoid that they would give in under his weight. Daxter was beat. “You take the bed tonight. I’ll take the floor.”

He didn’t find anything odd about this suggestion. In fact, he thought it made perfect sense. Jak had seemed pretty okay with hugging Daxter (trying to snap in half with affection, was more like it), but the guy had been _tortured_ for two years. He probably didn’t want to be touching people any more than he absolutely had to. But the look Jak shot him was strangely confused, and Daxter realized with a start that, maybe, Jak didn’t want to be alone. At least Daxter had had at least a few half decent social interactions over the past two years, but he doubted Jak had had any. Maybe it wasn’t so strange to think that his friend wanted one thing to go back to normal. Maybe, for now, they couldn’t go home. They hadn’t found Samos or Keira – they didn’t even know where to start looking. But they had each other, and that definitely counted for something. And if Jak would feel better by squishing together in the only available comfortable sleeping space, then Daxter wouldn’t complain. Much. “ _Fine_. We can share. But I hate to tell ya this, buddy – you absolutely _reek._ We’re gonna have to take care of that, ASAP.”

“You don’t exactly smell like roses, yourself, Dax.”

Dax…he thought he could get used to that….”


	5. Chapter 5

Mornings in Haven City dawned bleak and dreary, and this one was no different. No musical chirping of birds cheerily greeting the day, no roar of waves crashing against the shore, no warm beams of sunlight peaking through the window. Mornings in Haven City were heralded by the disgruntled honking of Zoomer drivers stuck in traffic, the characteristic creaking of Krimzon Guards stomping across the piers, and the smell of general misery – which smelled a little bit like stagnant sewer water left boiling in the sun. Daxter hadn’t been a morning person to begin with, but he would have vowed to wake up every single day at the crack of dawn if it could have meant that he would open his eyes and find himself back in Sandover. Not that wishful thinking had ever gotten him anywhere. But something was nagging at him in the back of his mind, telling him that something wasn’t quite right. Something was different…

The young teen yawned and theatrically stretched his arms over his head, and as he stretched his hand slipped underneath his pillow to wrap around the small knife he kept there for just such emergencies. Not that he had ever encountered just such an emergency – muggers had thankfully overlooked his scraggily, undernourished form in favor of wealthier-looking targets, and no one had yet tried to break into the house – but it was better to be safe than sorry. Daxter really, really hoped he wouldn’t have to deal with a burglar, though. The fiery-haired teen preferred to avoid conflict whenever possible, and he would probably just end up getting the snot kicked out of him.

“You’re going to stab me, Daxter?” Well, wasn’t that strange! The burglar – because who else would be in ‘his’ house uninvited but a burglar? – knew his name. Or…maybe that wasn’t so strange…Daxter had a few contacts around the slums, a few repeat customers, but no deals had ever gone south! There was no reason for anyone to accost him in ‘his’ own home – and this early in the morning, no less! What was Daxter supposed to do now that he had lost the element of surprise? Maybe he could talk them out of it; Daxter was a people person, after all. He had a way with words. And this guy sounded like he might be able to be reasoned with. In fact, he actually sounded kind of familiar, though Daxter swore he would have remembered a voice _that_ hot. All deep and…rugged, and…no – he needed to _focus_! His life might be at stake!

With no small amount of trepidation, Daxter finally dared to pry his eyes open and size up his mysterious burglar. Said burglar was a lot closer than Daxter had originally thought, sitting cross-legged on the side of the cot closest to the window. His appearance was even more eerily familiar than his voice, and there was only one elf in existence that had pitch black eyes like two bottomless pits and an aura of Dark Eco that snapped and crackled around them like a cloak of purple lightning. The older teen was staring down at him with a cocked eyebrow and a half-smirk Daxter hadn’t realized he’d missed. But, for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why an older, roguish version of Jak was parked on his bed, talking to him. For a moment, Daxter just stared up at the pale teen disbelievingly before the past twenty-four hours finally caught up with his sleep-fogged mind with a suddenness that made his head spin.

“Jak!”

The younger elf snapped up into a sitting position so fast he swore he almost gave himself whiplash, but he was too excited to care. He…he had actually done it! He had busted Jak out of prison!”

“Don’t get me wrong, but you don’t exactly seem the stabbing type,” Jak’s smirk grew as he nodded toward the dinky, little dagger Daxter still clutched in his hand. “Do you even know how to use it?”

“Hey! I’ll have you know that I have scared off a number of would-be assailants with my killer fighting skills!” Daxter boasted easily. The way Jak huffed and rolled his eyes was so achingly familiar that Daxter could almost pretend that they were back in their hut at Sandover and not in this ramshackle hut in Haven City. Almost, but not quite. “You doubt me now, but just you wait. You’ll see! Anyway, I hope you caught enough Z’s, ‘cause we’ve got a _big_ day ahead of us!”

Daxter knew Jak probably hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep last night. The two of them had stayed up late into the night, not exactly ‘catching up’ but just talking about everything and nothing. Jak, for obvious reasons, hadn’t exactly been eager to recant the past two years of his life and Daxter hadn’t dared to pry, but he had had plenty of questions for Daxter. The younger elf had answered as much as he could before he had finally just passed out mid-sentence, but Jak had still been wide awake. More than that, he had been wound up worse than a Crocadog in a thunderstorm, eyes fixed on the grimy window and aura flickering every time he heard the tiniest creak. There wasn’t anything Daxter could really do about it, but he was hoping there was one thing he _would_ be able to help Jak with and that was item Numero Uno on today’s agenda. “I’ve got a ‘friend’ I want ya to meet.”

“A ‘friend’?” Jak asked skeptically, and Daxter assumed the skepticism came from Jak being suspicious about new people and not because he doubted Daxter’s people skills. Because Daxter was perfectly capable of making friends, thank you very much; he just didn’t like dealing with the people of Haven City. Or anyone else, for that matter…

“Yes, a _friend_. It’s a surprise,” Daxter answered with a smile that was downright devious.

Breakfast consisted of Daxter’s last bit of fruit split in half and a chipped mug full of twice-boiled water (you could never be too careful when the ‘clean’ tap water constantly came out a warm brown color). Unwilling to sleep in the same bed as dozens of slaughtered elves (and possibly two years worth of prison grime), he had forced Jak to bathe last night with the wooden tub the previous residents had owned. All they had to do was make sure Jak’s demonic bits were safely hidden away, cross their fingers, and they were ready to start the day. Daxter’s ‘friend’ lived nearby – not three minutes away – which was part of the reason he had decided to settle down in this particular neighborhood in the first place.

Jak followed silently behind him, sticking close like an overgrown shadow, but Daxter didn’t mind the silence. Just because Jak had suddenly decided to talk didn’t mean he’d suddenly turned into a chatterbox. That was still the younger teen’s job. So he babbled away as the two plodded down the piers toward the largest hut in the flooded neighborhood. He told his friend about the couple who had owned the house and some of the other people who lived nearby, and he tried to keep the older boy distracted whenever a Krimzon Guard passed them by. There were a lot more of them out on the streets today than usual, guns already drawn and practically itching for a fight. Daxter had expected the extra security, what with Haven’s most wanted criminal running around free, but it still made him nervous.

Thankfully, they got to their destination without any problems. The building in front of them was, without a doubt, the best built and most well-kept in the entire neighborhood, but it still wasn’t much more than a glorified shack. However, the outside didn’t matter so much as what was going on inside. Daxter let Jak enter first and then followed after him, and he immediately felt…, well, not at _ease_. Daxter could never feel at ease in a place like this after some of the crap he had been through. But he felt…nostalgic, maybe?

Jak wasn’t sure what he was expecting when Daxter told him he had a ‘friend’ he wanted to meet. After he had nearly mauled an old man the previous day, he wasn’t exactly sure how capable he was of handling other people. He trusted Daxter, though, and he trusted his judgment. He always had. Just because he had never listened to his friend’s advice didn’t mean he disagreed with it. He valued the younger elf’s advice greatly…he just never followed it. But Daxter had been out in this world, dealing with it people, a lot more than Jak had. Jak knew the cliffs around Sandover like the back of his hand, he knew every plant and animal that swam and crawled and flew above the jungle, but he knew nothing of this strange, messed up world he had fallen into. So, force once, he would follow Daxter’s lead.

But Daxter’s ‘friend’ didn’t turn out to be a person at all. The back of the hut was completely taken up by what looked like a shrine dedicated to a Precursor Oracle. The giant, oddly machine watched the two elves with glowing blue eyes, its orange metal glistening in the light of the dozens of little candles placed around the Oracle and tucked into the rafters. Jak didn’t think he would ever see one of these things again – not until they found a way home, at least. He pulled his goggles away from his eyes and approached the Oracle slowly, not sure how he felt. He had never shared Daxter’s disdain for all things Precursor-related; in fact, he found them almost as fascinating as Samos had, but Oracles made him nervous. Jak had never even considered until he and Daxter had talked to that Oracle in Rock Village that the machines might actually be sentient beings, capable of thought. Ever since then, every time he had glanced at the Oracle perched over Sandover he had felt as if he were being watched. Weighed and measured.

But he couldn’t avoid them any longer. He’d been dangerous before, back in Sandover, but now Jak was just a liability if he didn’t learn some control. One wrong move would call a swarm of Krimzon Guards down on the both of them, and he couldn’t go back to that prison. He _wouldn’t_. Not when he had finally tasted freedom again, but that wasn’t the only reason. His other reason still hovered by the door, hands on his hips and frowning at the Oracle with no small amount of contempt.

“Greetings, dark warrior…” the ancient machine rasped in its gravelly voice when he had stepped close enough. “I have been waiting for you to return.”

Jak didn’t bother to ask how the Oracle already seemed to know who he was. He would chalk it up to another one of the great mysteries of the Precursors, something for Samos to figure out in his free time…after they found him and made sure he was alright. Though ‘return’ was an odd choice of words. “Can you help me control my powers?”

“I can, for a price,” the Oracle responded quietly, without emotion.

“A price?!” Daxter snapped incredulously as he stormed up to the machine. “Since when do you charge a fee? Your little friend was willing to do it for free!”

“Times have changed,” the Oracle droned. “This world is ending. Its fate now hangs on a precarious thread, and you alone cannot save it.”

“I’m not interested in saving the world,” Jak answered honestly, keeping his focus on the Precursor Oracle even though he could feel Daxter’s eyes on him. He felt bad for thinking it, but he didn’t care about this world, at all, or any of the people in it. All Jak had ever experienced in this world was pain and torment, and it didn’t seem as if the natives were doing much better. He didn’t belong here. Besides, he would be doing this world a favor by taking out two scumbags before he left. “I just want to find my friends and go home.”

“You cannot accomplish one without accomplishing the other, angry one. Your fate has been intertwined with the fate of this world since time immemorial,” the Oracle replied dispassionately.

Behind him, he heard Daxter’s familiar groan of resignation, the characteristic sound of misery he’d made every time Jak had tried to drag him along on one of his half-thought adventures. For the first time, Jak actually agreed with his friend whole-heartedly. Two years ago, the thought of another world-saving quest would have thrilled him. As much as he loved his quiet village, he had always yearned to go out and explore, to discover new places and try new things and push himself to his limits. After two years trapped in prison, he felt as if he had been pushed as far as he could go. He had endured more suffering than he believed anyone ever should, and he was tired.

But a part of him had instinctually perked up at the thought of being able to do some good, of being able to make this world even slightly better. It was a part of himself Jak had tucked away while in prison and buried beneath layer of protective rage. “What do you want me to do?”

“Destroy my enemies, those creatures that you call the Metal Heads,” the Oracle demanded with just a hint of steel creeping into its otherwise monotonous voice. “Bring me their skull gems, and I will teach you how to control these powers!”

After that, the Precursor Oracle said no more and the room fell strangely silent. That is, until a certain disgruntled teen decided to loudly voice his opinions.

“You figure you save the world once and you get a decent break, but _noooo_! Now we’re apparently the go-to-guys for all your world-saving needs!”

“At least we’re getting somewhere,” Jak offered, trying to see the bright side of things. The Oracle hadn’t told him no, exactly, and his words had implied that Keira and Samos were still alive and there was a way for them to go home. It gave him more hope than he had had in a long time. And if it was apparently his _fate_ to save this world, then, in a roundabout way, it meant that they had less to worry about. Of course, that didn’t mean that things couldn’t still go horribly wrong, as they tended to do whenever Jak and Daxter were involved…

“If you say so,” Daxter replied dubiously as he folded his arms over his chest. He turned towards the door, eager to get away from the Precursor artifact since it had more or less dismissed them. “We should probably find this ‘underground movement’ of Kor’s. “I betcha _they’ll_ be more helpful.” Daxter spat this last comment over his shoulder at the inert Oracle as the two of them left the building. He winced when a shudder went down his spine and was glad when the door slid firmly shut behind them, blocking the machine from view. He never had liked those googly-eyed Precursor monstrosities, with their cryptic mumbo-jumbo and secrets. Why couldn’t they ever just say anything straight out?

Despite Daxter’s misgivings, the visit to the Oracle seemed to have lifted Jak’s spirits somewhat – and Daxter couldn’t help but feel a bit smug at that since, after all, it had been his idea to go there. And the thought of finding this movement and getting some payback from the Baron? That practically had Jak skipping out the door. Well, not skipping, exactly. Even pre-prison Jak didn’t _skip_. But Jak’s gait had lost some of its previous, disturbing predatory edge, which was strange since the thought of tracking down the Baron and (probably) ripping him to pieces should have made Jak more homicidally scary and not _less so_ , but Daxter was going to chalk it up to the fact that Jak was just happy to be productive. Even the sight of Krimzon Guards, which only minutes before had caused him to flinch and growl under his breath, barely seemed to faze him.

However reluctant he had seemed, Jak had been given an _adventure._

Precursors, save them all.

“I think I know the alley Kor was talkin’ about,” Daxter commented as he led the other elf toward the end of one of the docks, where a Zoomer hovered quietly over the water waiting for its owner to return. Well, it would just have to keep waiting. Daxter would bring it back…eventually…if someone else didn’t steal it first. “You remember how to drive?”

Even though Daxter could drive, and could drive pretty well, he thought he might as well let Jak take the wheel. The older teen was already in a good mood, relatively speaking, and something as familiar as driving a Zoomer might help him out even more. A least it would get them off of the streets and away from Krimzon Guards. If the hideout was where Daxter thought it was, it would be a long walk, and he didn’t want to test Jak’s restraint. This way, Jak’s gaze would be focused on the traffic and not on the armor-clad elves below.

That’s what Daxter told himself as he slid onto the Zoomer behind Jak, because obviously Daxter didn’t have an ulterior motive to sharing a vehicle typically meant for a solo rider. Of course not. They were less conspicuous if they only took a single vehicle, that was all. And if he was sitting kind of close, it was just because it was a small vehicle and he wanted to make sure he didn’t go flying off. He had his arms wrapped around Jak’s waist for the same reason. It wasn’t as if Zoomers came with seatbelts or anything – that would make too much sense. Alright, so maybe Daxter had a tiny, little ulterior motive, but it was mostly innocent. Daxter may have been surrounded by people for the past two years, but no one he could trust. No one he could confide in or talk to without having to constantly be on guard. No one he could joke with or wrestle with or be himself with. He had missed Jak, and now he finally had him back.

He had even missed his stupid Dark Eco aura, which he had grudgingly gotten used to. It crackled between them like static electricity wherever they touched, thankfully hidden from any wandering eyes. Daxter wondered if Jak even knew it was happening. His aura had become such a part of him and yet sometimes it still seemed like a completely separate entity. It crackled merrily about him when he was happy, petered almost to a complete stop when he was sad, and stormed around him like a tornado when he was angry. It barely felt like a puff of air when it touched Daxter, and yet the very same lance of Dark Eco could burn the flesh of anyone Jak had deemed a threat. Sometimes (a lot of the time), Daxter wondered if exposing himself to Dark Eco like this might not result in some unsavory consequences. He wasn’t a channeler like Jak, but he had no wish to turn grey and demented like Gol and Maia had.

Daxter let himself relax fully for the first time in a long while as they soared over the dusty streets of Haven City. He let Jak know when he needed to turn and reminded him that the Zoomer could switch hover levels, if traffic got too bad, but other than that Daxter remained silent. Eventually they arrived at the other end of the slums, not far from the prison’s main entrance and one of the entrances to the Red District. The two teens parked the Zoomer and Daxter led the way to the only other dead end alley in the slums, other than the one they had landed in when he had busted Jak out of prison. He had never swung by this side of the slums all that often, but he had made it a point to know the entire area better than the back of his hand. One could never be too careful in Haven City.

The alleyway was dark, with tall, cramped apartments on either side blocking out any sunlight. Two elves stood near the end of the alleyway, talking in hushed voices. Daxter couldn’t see much from where he stood, but he thought they were a male and a female, one shorter and dressed in street clothes while the other was dressed in what might have been light armor. Definitely not the bulky, brightly colored armor of the Krimzon Guard, but not the kind of stuff that an average Joe would be wearing, either. Their conversation abruptly halted when they noticed they weren’t completely alone.

“Uh…maybe I should handle this, Jak,” Daxter suggested cautiously, remembering how his friend had almost ripped off an old man’s hand the day before. But Jak wasn’t paying any attention to him. His black-eyed gaze was fixed on one of the two figures in the alleyway, on the male dressed in armor, though thankfully his goggles still hid them from view. The pale teen had become as still and as tense as a statue, and even his breathing seemed to have stopped. “Jak?”

The fiery-haired teen glanced back down the alleyway and peered at the strange elf, but he couldn’t see anything all that alarming. Yea, it looked like he was armed, but that made sense if he was a part of the underground movement. And they had passed dozens of KG without Jak having a reaction like this. And, okay, so the guy looked a little funny. His dark auburn hair was pulled back into what looked like thick dreadlocks, and his rugged face was covered in bluish-gray tattoos. If the guy had been trying to prove he was some sort of badass by tattooing his own _face_ , he had only proved that he must have some sort of complex and was obviously overcompensating for something.

Jak obviously found something highly upsetting about the stranger, because suddenly his aura was crackling around him furiously, lighting up the dark alley and making Daxter’s hair stand on end. In two seconds flat, Jak shifted from being in a relatively good mood to being the black-eyed demon Daxter had unleashed on the unsuspecting prison guards. Teeth bared, claws twitching, and growling under his breath, any restraint Jak might have had seemed to have been thrown out the window – and Daxter couldn’t figure out why!

Daxter stepped in front of his friend as casually as he could and placed a hand on his shoulder, hoping he could calm the Eco-infused elf before anything could happen. He had a bad feelings things were about to get real ugly real fast. “You alright there, buddy? We’re tryin’ to keep a low profile, remember?”

He chanced a glance behind him and saw that both the elves were still standing there. The male kept gesturing for the other to leave, but she wouldn’t listen. Rather than looked scared, she merely watched them with a wary expression, one of her hands reaching into the back pocket of her admittedly very short shorts. Frustrated, the male turned to face Jak and Daxter again, hand reaching down to one of the two holsters on his hips. That was apparently the final straw for Jak, who saw that as a direct threat. With a vicious snarl, he threw himself around Daxter and around the alleyway, leaving a dazed and very panicked young elf calling his name and rushing after him. It would be very, very bad if Jak killed innocent elves, and especially the elves they wanted to work with!

The elf with the dreadlocks raised and cocked his gun, but he wasn’t quite fast enough. A lance of Dark Eco whipped out in front of Jak and caught the elf on the hand, causing him to cursed and drop his weapon. In the time it took him to pull out his second gun, Jak was on him. Daxter wasn’t exactly sure what happened, it was all just sort of a high speed blur. When the proverbial smoke had cleared, Jak had the stranger pressed against the wall of the alley with one arm, while the claws of the other hovered near the stranger’s neck. The other elf, though, proved that he wasn’t completely defenseless. A good-sixed dagger was now pressed firmly against Jak’s jugular, and the irate stranger looked like he had no qualms with slicing his assailant’s neck from ear to ear. He didn’t even flinch as Jak’s Eco snapped at him threateningly. The female elf, a young blonde, had whipped a dagger out of her back pocket, but she had the sense not to come any closer.

This couldn’t have gotten much uglier.

“You know, I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot,” Daxter chuckled nervously as he edged closer, but it was as if his words went right over everyone’s heads. The dreadlocked stranger glared up at Jak with eyes like hard, blue steel, and Jak glared back with equal ferocity.

“If you’re going to start something, you might as well finish it,” the elf drawled in a surprisingly hoarse voice. Something about Jak shifted then; he seemed almost…confused. The stranger picked up on his hesitation and quickly used it against him, thankfully not stabbing Jak but using his free hand to deck him clear across the face. He followed up with a swift kick to the gut before Jak could recover and quickly used his newfound freedom to put some distance between them and aim his second gun right between Jak’s eyes. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t shoot you right now.”

Jak glared at the elf in front of him with enough venom to peel paint, but he wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t realize when he was beat. He wasn’t fast enough to avoid being shot point blank. Daxter chose that moment to swoop in and try to salvage this situation as best he could, putting himself between Jak and the stranger again and trying not to flinch when the gun’s aim adjusted slightly so that it was pointing at his brain instead. “So, uh…you must be Torn, right? We’re here to help. Kor sent us.”


	6. Chapter 6

If there was one thing Daxter was particularly good at, it was hiding his thoughts and feelings behind a smile. Now, his fake smiles never, ever fooled Jak, who had always been able to read him like a book, but he could fool just about anyone else. Fake smiles weren't necessarily a bad thing – they could come in handy, especially in a cutthroat place like Haven City. Daxter could hide all his disgust, outrage, and fear behind an easy grin and a sarcastic comment or two. It helped him distance himself from the horror that was Haven City, and there could never be quite enough distance between him and this dump of a city. It wasn't quite as helpful when there was a gun aimed unwaveringly between his eyes, but he rather grin like an idiot than have a panic attack in front of a guy who had faced down Jak's wrath and won. The stranger, Torn he was guessing, glared at the both of them with a hard, blue stare that made Daxter feel like a particularly nasty, disease-ridden insect under a microscope. As far as first impressions went, theirs probably couldn't have gone any worse.

After a tense moment of silence, where all that could be heard was the crackling of Jak's Dark Eco and the muted thumping of Daxter's heart trying to beat its way out of his chest, Torn thankfully lowered his weapon. "Not interested."

"Whattdya mean 'Not interested'?" Daxter demanded incredulously, but he honestly wasn't at all surprised. He and Jak were lucky this guy hadn't shot them both already. They couldn't really expect him to want to hire the guy who had nearly ripped his head off, and the fact that Jak was discharging copious amounts of toxic Dark Eco wasn't adding much in his favor, either. But they weren't dead, yet, and that had to be a good sign, right? Maybe, just maybe, Daxter could salvage this situation with a bit of his personal charm. "I mean, look at us! Two seasoned warriors, raring to go! Loads of experience under our belts. This is a golden opportunity! You need guys like us!"

The older elf scoffed derisively and gave the two teens one last, unimpressed onceover before turning away. "I've got enough problems without having to worry about two kids, let alone a loose cannon like him. If you and your friend want to join something, why don't you go join the circus?"

The tattooed elf left before Daxter could give him a piece of his mind, disappearing through a giant, automatic door that looked out of place in the dingy alleyway. The young woman gave them one last surprisingly surly glare before following after him, and then he and Jak were alone in the alley. Well, things could have gone much, much worse. Daxter and Jak were still alive and bullet-free, and Jak hadn't accidentally mauled anybody. Speaking of Jak…Daxter turned around to see how his older friend was doing. It was hard to tell with his goggles on, but Daxter thought that he seemed pretty calm, all things considered. He wasn't trying to dive through the doorway and rip Torn apart, at least, but the whole situation was just odd. That guy hadn't been doing anything other than standing there minding his own business when Jak had attacked him out of the blue, and Jak had planned on killing Torn. There was no question about that. But why?

"Geez, Jak. Dozens of Krimzon Guards and you pick him – the guy we need to talk to – to flip out on! Out of all the other options!" Daxter snapped without any real irritation behind it. He wasn't angry at Jak so much as…concerned. Really, really concerned. Jak had had some self-control issues before. He had never hurt anybody back at the village, but he had sure scared the ever-living out of them. If someone had so much as looked at Daxter the wrong way, sparks had literally started flying. While Daxter had appreciated the reprieve from the constantly muttered insults and side comments that the villagers didn't seem to realize were hurtful, the way Jak had sometimes eyed the villagers – not all that unlike the way he had eyed some of the Lurkers they had come up against – was more than a little disconcerting.

Now, though…That was the second time Jak had lashed out against somebody, and this guy he had almost killed. And it hadn't even been two days! The only thing between Jak and a city full of slaughtered elves seemed to be one gangly sixteen year old, and Daxter didn't know if he could handle that kind of responsibility. The anger Jak had had before, two years ago…it was nothing compared to this. Back then, it was like the anger and Jak had been two separate things. One minute he was his same old, laidback, adventure-loving Jak, and the next he was a lean, mean killing machine who relished in the screams of his victims. His mood swings had sometimes been sudden and unexpected, but it hadn't taken much at all to snap Jak out of his bloodlust. But whatever had happened to Jak in prison…all of that anger was a part of Jak now in a way it had never been before. Jokes couldn't snap Jak out of it because this was Jak; this was Jak's anger, not the Eco influencing him.

"He was a Krimzon Guard," Jak answered gruffly, sounding confused but not remorseful.

Daxter, still mid-rant, took a moment to catch up. It was hard to stop him when he was on a roll. "I mean, really, wha-…Wait, what?"

Jak finally pried his gaze away from the door down the alleyway, but it was obvious he still wasn't all there. Behind his goggles, unbeknownst to Daxter, Jak was glaring at a memory still fresh in his mind. A memory of a sadistic leer and a smug gaze peering at him from a dark corner. "Those tattoos. I've seen some like those before…"

They hadn't been the same exact tattoos as Erol, but they had been close enough that Jak hadn't given any thought to lunging forward and trying to rip off Torn's face. He knew the markings were a sign of leadership amongst the Krimzon Guard, and only very high-ranking members like Erol and a few of the other KG Officers that had stopped by his cell block were allowed to have them. Maybe he wasn't any longer, but at some point in his life Torn had been a high-ranking member of the Krimzon Guard. Maybe he had even been around while Jak had been imprisoned. Either way, there was no way Jak would be able to work with an elf like Torn. Even if it turned out that Torn was reformed, that he wasn't a monster like all of the other KG out there, Jak didn't think he'd ever be able to look him in the face without seeing Erol.

"Uh…Jak? You okay, man?" Jak glanced up to see his young friend staring down at him with his hands on his hips and a concerned frown on his face. It was going to take a while for Jak to get used to the fact that Daxter was taller than him now when Jak had always teased Daxter about being short when they were younger, but maybe Jak would hit a growth spurt now that he wasn't trapped in that prison.

"I don't trust him," he answered honestly. He didn't trust Torn and he couldn't trust Kor, who had just rubbed him the wrong way. Maybe it was better that they didn't work with the Underground after all, though that might make things more difficult. Daxter had mentioned that they were stuck in the slums and couldn't leave without some kind of security pass, and those weren't exactly easy to come by. There was a whole sprawling city and Keira and Samos could be anywhere, but Jak and Daxter couldn't go out there to look for them. Maybe the Underground would have been able to help them with that, but it didn't matter now. It seemed that Jak and Daxter were on their own. That was fine. If they could save an entire planet, then they could take down a Baron and find their friends in this labyrinth of a city. Probably.

"No kidding?" the younger teen asked sarcastically, and Jak shoved him in the shoulder, hiding a smirk. So, okay, he had overreacted. A lot. What did Daxter expect? "Alright, alright. So we'll just have to go with Plan B."

Daxter had gone through a lot of work to find out where Jak was being held in prison and, consequently, he had learned about a few other things…like how the Baron currently had a boatload of ammo stashed away on one of the bottom levels of the prison that had been sitting there for quite some time. Daxter didn't know why the Baron was letting perfectly good explosives gather rust instead of using them on the bloodthirsty monsters attacking the city. In the two years Daxter had been here, the Baron had only ever acted defensively when the Metal Heads had attacked, and he had only sent the bare minimum of Guards to ward them off. There had been plenty of times where none of the Guards had come back inside the walls at all. If he had been using half the weapons Daxter now knew he kept stored in the prison, maybe things wouldn't have been so bad around here.

Blowing up some of the Baron's weapons definitely wasn't the smartest idea, but was any harm really being done if Praxis wasn't even using it? It should certainly piss him off and catch his attention, at least. And, surprisingly, Daxter was pretty eager to start causing their beloved leader a little grief. Starting fights wasn't usually Daxter's thing – he was definitely the kind of guy who liked to hide behind the bigger, stronger, braver guy and let them take care of everything. But they had to do something. They couldn't sit around twiddling their thumbs waiting for Keira and Samos to find them. Daxter had been hoping for the past two years that the two Sandover natives would miraculously pop up, but that had obviously never happened. And Jak wouldn't let them sit around idle. He was itching to do something, and maybe something destructive like blowing up a chunk of the place where he had been imprisoned would calm his nerves and cheer him up.

And maybe, just maybe, Daxter wanted to show that stuck up tattooed wonder that he was wrong about him and Jak. They weren't just kids. They were two teenagers – thank you very much – that had saved the world before and he was pretty sure they could handle just about anything the world felt like throwing at them. Of course, Torn didn't know all of these things, and he probably wouldn't believe them even if they told him about all the things they'd gone through, but it was the principle of the thing! Perhaps Jak felt the same way, because it certainly didn't take much convincing on Daxter's part to get Jak to go. He seemed leery of going back to the prison, but the promise of being able to blow part of it up cinched it for him. And, luckily for them, sneaking to the sector where Praxis kept his unused ammo was a heck of a lot easier than trying to sneak to the top floor of the prison ward. For one thing, they could use the front door.

'Course, Daxter hadn't had to worry about giant, heavily armored security tanks with lethal spikes embedded into the treads and a motion-sensing gun on top. With a hulk like that guarding the front door, it was no wonder the KG were so lax in security on the lower levels. It was almost as if they didn't realize that there was a Dark Eco infused, homicidal, revenge-driven hormonal teenager loose in the city who might want a little thing called revenge. After they had escaped the security tank, making their way to the ammo dump was ridiculously easy if a little, um…bloody. It was going to take Daxter a while to get used to way Jak tore through whole squadrons of Krimzon Guards like they were nothing, but he wasn't entirely sure that wasn't something he wanted to get used to. He had thought the way Jak had slaughtered Lurkers was needlessly violent, but Daxter felt sorry for the Krimzon Guards. True, he hadn't met a single one so far who hadn't been a major jerk, but he didn't think anyone deserved the kind of death Jak was dishing out. Except for Baron Praxis…

The ammo was being kept in a massive storeroom filled unmarked metal crates and barrels of Dark Eco. It still blew Daxter's mind that everything in this city was running off of Dark Eco. Back home, the few gizmos that hadn't been mechanical or run off of water or some kind of fuel had all worked off of Blue Eco. Just the merest speck of the energetic Eco had been able to cause huge chunks of ancient Precursor bridges to unbury themselves from the ground and reconstruct themselves. And Blue Eco wasn't dangerous, as far as Daxter knew, not like Dark Eco. The thought that everything he used, from the dingy light in 'his' house to the Zoomers that flew overhead, were all powered by the same substance that had changed Jak and that had driven Gol and Maia insane…it was just a little terrifying.

But the room was thankfully KG-free and silent save for the rumbling of another security tank. This one thankfully didn't try to run them over or shoot them, and Daxter assumed they had disabled the lethal security so close to a bunch of explosives. The fiery-haired teen grinned when he spotted something lying on one of the barrels of Dark Eco that he didn't think he'd ever be able to get his hands on.

"Cool! That's a security pass!" he explained as Jak picked up the pass and examined it. "We need those to get through city checkpoints!"

Finally, Daxter would be able to leave the slums. He didn't know about the Red District except that it was full of factories and smog, but any change of scenery would be good. After two years trapped in the same few dusty city blocks, Daxter was starting to feel a bit claustrophobic.

The relative silence was suddenly broken by the bong of a metal container hitting more metal, and both teenagers tensed. The sound hadn't come from anywhere in the room, but rather from the room beneath them. It was hard to see through the small holes in the metal floor, but there was a pretty large grate not far from the tank with spaces between the bars wide enough to see clearly through. The two teens laid low and peered through the grate, and Jak tried his best to keep his aura from crackling curiously as they watched the scene down below.

It was hard to tell what kind of room it was. It looked like a giant hallway or maybe another storeroom, but one side of the room was lined with massive, barred pipe openings. Two Krimzon Guards and what looked like a year's supply of Dark Eco stood by an opening where the bars had been torn away, and they weren't alone. Daxter had never seen Metal Heads before, but he had heard enough horror stories to be able to recognize them when he saw them. Two Metal Heads lurked in the broken pipe, growling to each other and snarling threateningly at the two Guards. They weren't much bigger than elves, though they hunched on all fours. The skin Daxter could see seemed to be a deep, dark blue, and the rest of them was covered in a metallic substance the young elf had never seen before. Though, if the rumors were true, the metal was a part of the Metal Heads– notarmor that they wore but something that grew out of them. Bright yellow gems glowed from the centers of their foreheads, shining eerily in the darkness of the pipe.

"Jak, those are Metal Heads!" Daxter whispered furiously, hoping he could convey just how bad this situation was. How had these things gotten into the prison, practically in the center of the city, without being noticed? They obviously weren't prisoners, because the Guards didn't seem all that disturbed.

"These barrels are the latest shipment of Eco," one of the Guards suddenly barked, his voice muffled by his face mask. "The Baron says take them and get out!"

The Metal Heads growled and hissed, apparently not liking the Guards' attitude any more than anyone else, and the Krimzon Guards lifted their guns in warning.

"Metal Heads in the city?" Jak wondered out loud, apparently thinking the same thing as Daxter. "Why are the Guards giving them Eco?"

Daxter opened his mouth to answer, but the nearby security tank chose that moment to decide to finally take care of the two intruders. The turret on top turned to stare them down, and the engine started to rumble in earnest. The two teens shared a quick look and smirked at the same time, the same idea running through their mind.

Really, who on earth would store a trigger-happy automatic tank in the same room as a giant missile?

Destroying the missile was actually kind of fun – the most fun Daxter had had in two years. Sure it was dangerous and reckless and he was never, ever going to do something like this again, EVER, because he had his whole life ahead of him and he wanted to live it to the fullest. But this was what friendship with Jak was all about. Risking your life for the small chance of succeeding in something great, accidentally (or in this case purposefully) pissing people off, the thrill of adventure. Maybe Daxter had complained and moaned and groaned every time Jak had dragged him out to the jungle or convinced him to do something he didn't want to do, but, in the end, he had always enjoyed himself. Because he was with Jak, and Jak had a strange way of making even the most dangerous, life-threatening, hair-raising, spine-tingling situations fun. Even now, as he dodged incoming fire from the turret and hid behind the missile, he had an ear-to-ear grin on his face. And not that creepy, murderous grin Daxter had been seeing every time Jak killed somebody, but almost like the carefree grin Jak had thrown around all the time in Sandover. Almost. Daxter had been stunned stiff when he saw it, and had almost gotten a face full of bullets because of it, but it wasn't long before he had a matching grin. He felt like a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders that he hadn't really noticed was there, considering all the other weights he'd had to deal with. The boy from Sandover was changed, but he was still there.

Of course, this wasn't all fun and games. Eventually, the tank caused enough damage to the missile that it activated itself, and Jak and Daxter barely had enough time to scramble for the emergency exit before the whole payload was exploding behind them. Daxter could feel the rush of air as the missile detonated, could feel the heat of the explosion and feel the pressure of the blast wave as it shoved them uncaringly out of the exit and into the dark night. The younger teen screamed helplessly as the dusty ground rose up to meet him, but the fall itself didn't really hurt. What did hurt was Jak's surprisingly heavy body landing on top of him like a sack of oversized potatoes. He was going to be bruised and sore in the morning.

The older teen laughed and rolled off of him as the payload continued to exploded above them, sending confused citizens running in terror. They would have to leave soon if they didn't want the Krimzon Guard to find them here, but at the moment Daxter could care less about the KG. Jak was laughing. For a second it was like Jak hadn't been in prison for those two years. All of the pain and anger and hatred that hung around him constantly like a dark cloud seemed to have evaporated, at least for the time being, leaving behind pure, unadulterated Jak.

"This place has too much excitement! We need to move back to the country!" Daxter groused, though it was hard to sound angry when he couldn't stop grinning himself. If all Jak needed to cheer up were a few death-defying stunts, than Daxter would gladly blow up a thousand deadly missiles, or whatever else it took. With Daxter's luck, and Jak's nonexistent self-preservation instincts, he would probably have plenty of chances to risk his life for the greater good.

"We should probably tell Torn about those Metal Heads," Jak admitted with a sigh, reluctant to go anywhere near the tattooed elf again. But if the ex-Krimzon Guard really was trying to help the city, then the Underground would need to hear about this. It was strange. Jak had heard Guards complain about the Metal Heads before. They were a constant threat looming over the city, and Erol had always complained about how many men he was losing defending the city. And the Baron had always complained about Eco shortages; about how the Eco mines were slowly running dry and how much Eco he was wasting on Jak every day. It didn't make any sense for the Krimzon Guard to be handing Dark Eco over to the enemy, and under the Baron's orders no less. "Somebody needs to hear about this."

"And who else is gonna let him know how awesome we are?" Daxter added with a smirk, eager to go back and show Torn just how badly he had underestimated them. Talking to Torn would have to wait until tomorrow, though. The yells of Krimzon Guards could be heard in the distance, growing louder by the second, and the two teens barely managed to disappear before an entire squadron was swarming underneath the emergency exit of the prison like agitated wumpbees, searching for the culprits. The fire from inside the prison was slowly spreading to the roofs of the nearby apartments, but the KG didn't seem to notice or care. Eventually a cruiser from the fire department would come to douse the growing blaze before it could damage any more of the prison, but the nearby houses would only be taken care of as an afterthought.

Jak and Daxter didn't dare show their faces again until the following day, after some of the heat had died down. There were even more Guards on the streets now than before. Not only did they patrol the streets on foot with their guns drawn and ready to fire, but they also hovered above, watching suspiciously from the air in Hellcat Cruisers and Zoomers. The two teens walked all the way from the flooded slums to the Underground's hideout, Daxter too paranoid that the KG would spot him hotwiring a Zoomer and actually do something to stop him for once.

Jak spent the walk watching the people of Haven City and comparing him to the people he knew and loved. The people here seemed…washed out somehow. It wasn't just that the people here seemed to be less…colorful then the people Jak was used to, because that was true enough. Nobody here had bright purple hair or dressed in bright colors; the people came in the same muted browns and greys as their city. But the citizens of Haven City…they reminded Jak of the warrior he and Daxter had met in Rock Village. Tired of fighting over and over again only to be effortlessly defeated, resigned to the fact that no matter what they did they could never fix their situation. They had given up hope because it hurt too much. Jak could see it in the slump of their shoulders, in the way their dull eyes never left the dusty streets below their feet, in the way they barely talked to one another. How long had they been like this? How bad were their lives that they just seemingly lost the will to care anymore?

“ _We are all his prisoners…”_

"Nothing says secret organization like big, brightly painted, anti-government propaganda," Daxter scoffed as they arrived at the dead-end alleyway. The door Torn had disappeared through was pretty clearly marked by graffiti that looked like a hammer smashing the Baron's insignia, and the teen didn't know why the Krimzon Guard hadn't found this place before. The front door didn't even have any security on it. No scanner, no keypad, not even a basic lock. The door slid open for them as they approached, and the two teens descended into the so-called Underground.

Once Daxter saw the inside, he understood why the Krimzon Guard had never bothered them. The hideout was small – larger than your average slum apartment but certainly not big enough for an 'underground movement' fighting against a tyrant dictator. Four bunk beds sat by the door, presumably where Underground members slept. Beyond that was a fairly big open space with a massive table in the middle covered with papers and what looked like maps. An open furnace on the left and a burning barrel on the right supplied heat. Every other space was taken up by unmarked boxes, crates, and barrels. Every inch of wall space was covered with maps and posters, newspaper clippings and photos of important government and military officials. Despite all the clutter, the place still had an abandoned, empty feel to it. There was really no sign that anyone lived here or ever used the beds, and Daxter had a feeling the Underground had seen better days. The Krimzon Guard probably didn't even consider them a legitimate threat.

Torn stood in the middle of the room, hunched over the maps on the table and frowning irritably at something or another. That is, until he noticed he had two uninvited guests. The glare he sent their way was more annoyed than anything else, like they were two flies that wouldn't leave him alone, and the look made Daxter's hackles rise.

"Don't tell me I wasn't clear enough the first time…" the older elf rasped irritably as he stood up straighter and glowered at them from across the table. Jak stayed beside the bunk beds. He hadn't been able to control himself last time, hadn't even thought about controlling himself, and he didn't want to make the same mistake again. Torn wasn't exactly a barrel full of sunshine, but he wasn't Erol. It didn't seem like he wasn't anything like Erol, thankfully. And the longer Jak looked, the more and more differences he could see between the two elves. Torn didn't have that disgusting leer, for one, and though his outfit wasn't anything a civilian would wear, it wasn't anything a KG would be caught dead in either. And, even though Daxter didn't seem to like him anymore than Jak did, he seemed to trust him alright.

"Just thought we'd swing by and see if you hadn't heard the news," Daxter drawled as he came up to the table and leaned against it with his hip. Torn's glare intensified just slightly, as if the thought of the unwanted teen touching his furniture personally offended him, and Daxter's smirk widened just a bit. "They say the prison was attacked, ya know. No one's sure who did it, exactly, but eye witnesses say they saw two kids running from the scene of the crime."

The ex-KG snorted derisively and folded his arms over his chest, his expression that of disbelief. "You expect me to believe that was you?"

Unable to contain himself, Daxter's smirk split into a shit-eating grin. "One barbecued ammo dump, served up hot!"

The older elf actually…laughed. It was so sudden and unexpected that Daxter actually backed away a step, afraid that something might be wrong with the ex-KG. It wasn't a particularly boisterous laugh. To be honest, it kind of sounded more like a sick bark than a laugh. And then Torn smiled at them, though his smile was just as dubious as his laugh. "So I was wrong about you before. You're both off the deep end."


	7. Chapter 7

So Torn wasn’t a complete heartless bastard, which was a relief. It set the older elf apart from Erol just a little bit more. Jak couldn’t exactly relax – those tattoos would always mark the elf as an ex-KG and Jak held too much hatred for them to ever be able to look completely past that – but he could breathe a little easier. Ad when Torn turned to look at him with narrowed, wary eyes, the urge to leap across the table and slaughter him was slightly more manageable. This elf was hardened in a way Erol wasn’t – Jak could tell that just by looking at him. Torn couldn’t be all that much older than him, but he had had a tough life. Jak could see it in the hunch of his shoulders, in the way he held every part of himself tense as if he were bracing for _something_ but he didn’t know when it would come. Torn didn’t exude the hopelessness that all the other citizens of Haven City shared. He was battered and bruised and jaded, but he still had hope enough to join a movement to stop the Baron. Torn hadn’t given up. He had turned against people he must have worked with for years, people he may have been friends with, all to save what he considered his home.

Jak could respect that.

And maybe, given some more time, he would be able to look at Torn without Erol’s disgusting leer flashing in his mind’s eye.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Torn eventually rasped, folding his arms over his chest. “Word on the street is there’s some sort of Dark Eco monster running loose. I have to say, you’re not exactly what I was expecting.”

The pale teen smiled wryly and pushed his goggles back onto his forehead, no longer seeing any real reason to try to hide from the elf he had tried to kill just the day before. Torn had seen the Dark Eco then, had felt it burn across his skin, and yet the older elf wasn’t afraid of him. Or at least he hid it very well. He didn’t so much as flinch when Jak’s inky black eyes locked onto him from across the room. “I didn’t disappoint you, did I?” Jak asked, smirk growing when Daxter rolled his eyes at him.

“At first I thought the Baron had sent you to destroy the Underground,” Torn admitted, spitting out Praxis’ title with enough acid to eat through Precursor metal. All traces of humor had disappeared as quickly as they had appeared. “It wouldn’t be the first time he had sacrificed innocent lives to try and stop us. I’ve seen his evil before…”

“When you were a Krimzon Guard,” Jak snarled, unable to stop himself. His aura crackled around him threateningly, daring the other elf to deny it, but Torn didn’t even blink. If anything, he just looked mildly annoyed.

“That’s why I quit,” Torn responded solemnly, confirming one of Jak’s suspicions. It didn’t negate the fact that Torn had joined the Guard in the first place, but at least he’d decided to do the right thing in the end. Jak didn’t know much about Haven City, certainly not nearly as much as Daxter, but he couldn’t understand anyone who could willingly follow an elf who had let his city fall so hard and seemed to be doing nothing about it. Seemed to be making things _worse_ , in fact.

“I hate to interrupt this bonding moment,” Daxter piped in as he glanced between the two older elves. He was glad Jak seemed to be sort of, kind of getting along with the tattooed rebel and not ripping him to shreds. While he had absolute faith and his and Jak’s ability to cause plenty of trouble for the Baron and maybe even survive, he had some doubts when it came to the Metal Heads. There was a reason why no one ever left Haven City no matter how bad it got – there was nowhere else to go. As far as Daxter knew, Haven City was the last bastion of safety in a writhing sea of Metal Heads and death. And apparently Baron Praxis was inviting death right on in! “But are we gonna talk about the _Metal Heads_ in the _city_?”

“You didn’t think that you might want to mention that first?” Torn hissed incredulously as he stood up straighter and glared down at Daxter as if it were _him_ who had been yapping away. Which…he had, at first, but he had been getting to it!

“We saw something odd while torching that ammo,” Jak explained as he came closer to the table, stepping into the fluorescent light that flickered weakly above it and folding his arms over his chest. It was still so odd for Daxter to hear Jak _speaking_ , but it had only been a few days. He had spent so many years interpreting what the older teen was thinking and translating for him that he almost felt like he was forgetting to do something by letting Jak do the talking. But it wasn’t exactly a bad thing – not at all. On the contrary, Daxter kind of enjoyed watching Jak talk.

Daxter was so used to constantly watching the other teen for different facial quirks and body shifts to try to figure out what he was thinking, but throwing in speech opened up a whole new can of worms. Jak moved when he talked. Which wasn’t to say that he hadn’t moved _before_ , but there were a lot of subtle body movements involved in talking that Daxter had just never really paid all that much attention to before. It wasn’t even anything all that noticeable, but it was all new to Daxter. Even the simplest sentences were a novelty. The way Jak shifted his weight from one hip to the other mid-sentence. The way he could change posture so quickly depending on what he said and how he said it. It was…interesting.

And that wasn’t even getting into how bizarre it was to hear Jak’s _voice_. He had been so startled by the simple “Morning” Jak had thrown him earlier today that he had flailed and tumbled out of bed. Daxter wasn’t sure if his poor heart could take such surprises every morning, but how long would it take to get used to Jak’s voice after nearly seventeen years of relative silence? Even though, when Jak had laughed at him, it had mostly sounded the same, it had also sounded…richer somehow, maybe? Fuller? Or maybe it was just Daxter’s very active imagination…

“The Baron’s Guards were giving barrels full of _Eco_ to a group of _Metal Heads_ ,” Jak finished explaining, snapping Daxter out of his wandering thoughts. Right. Pressing matters. Pressing, life-threatening, world-endangering matters. The fiery-haired teen glanced at Torn to see what his reaction would be. The blatant look of shock seemed out of place on the elf’s weathered face, but that just drove home how serious this was. The Baron might be more corrupt than any of them had thought.

“ _Really_?” the older elf drawled when the incredulousness had simmered down to a sort of self-deprecating resignation – like he was ashamed that he’d been surprised in the first place and should have already expected the Baron capable of stooping so low. “The Shadow will be _very_ interested to hear that…”

“So when do we get to meet this ‘Shadow’ guy, anyway,” Daxter asked, genuinely curious. He didn’t particularly like mysteries. They left a bad taste in his mouth. Mysteries had only ever gotten him and Jak into trouble. And he wanted to know who the leader of the Underground was, if it wasn’t Torn.

“When I say so, _if_ I say so,” Torn answered harshly, heavily implying that, if he got things his way, they wouldn’t be seeing the Shadow _any_ time soon.

“Whaddya mean?” Daxter snapped, the older elf’s attitude starting to grate on him more than Samos’, if such a thing were possible. “We didn’t _have_ to tell you about those Metal Heads, y’know. Jak and I coulda handled this situation ourselves, couldn’t we, Jak?”

Jak opened his mouth to reply, but the younger teen continued before his friend could get a word out. While Jak rolled his eyes fondly, Torn’s eyes narrowed into thin slits. “Can you believe this? We brought this guy this information out of the bottom of our hearts and _this_ is how he repays us!”

“I don’t trust you,” Torn ground out before the young Sandover native could continue with his theatrics.

“How’s it go? ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’?” Daxter offered with a smirk, pleased that he seemed to irk Torn just as much as the older elf irked him.

Torn snortd derisively and folded his arms over hist chest, his patience obvious growing thin. “Look, if you two want to start proving yourselves, I _might_ have a job for you. One of our ‘suppliers’ needs his payment delivered – a bag of Eco ore. There should be a Zoomer parked out front with a package strapped to it. Take it and drive to the Hip Hog Heaven Saloon in South Town. Ask for Krew – he’ll be there. And don’t let the Baron’s patrols stop you.”

Daxter listened attentively, unintentionally slipping into “business mode” – something he had developed over the past two years. Daxter had never done anything too dangerous, but he had sometimes had to do some…shady things to get by. Had maybe sold some stuff he shouldn’t have, things that weren’t entirely legit. A job involving Krew, though – that was a big deal. Anyone who had ever even _thought_ of doing anything even remotely illegal had heard of him – the crime lord of Haven City. Botching a job from Krew was probably worse than spitting in the Baron’s morning cup of tea right in front of the guy. Behind him, Jak watched the change in his young friend with a raised eyebrow and a curious frown. It was unsettling to see his laidback and lazy friend suddenly so serious. It was almost as if a switch had been flipped. The Daxter he knew was never eager to do _anything_ that didn’t involve lazing around in a patch of sunlight somewhere. The only effort he had willingly put forth had been the effort I took to avoid doing any of Samos’ chores. But he supposed Daxter wouldn’t have survived very long in this city if he had stayed the same lazy kid from Sandover.

“By the way,” the ex-KG added, “While you’re there, pump Krew for information. He’s wired into the city and may know what the Baron is up to.”

“You can count on us,” Daxter promised him. He had never failed at a job yet and he didn’t plan to start now, though this was admittedly a lot riskier than the gigs he was used to.

Assured that he had given the two teenagers a task that would keep them out of his hair at least for the rest of the day, Torn turned his back on them and folded his arms over his chest, clearly dismissing them. “Are you still here…?”

The two young elves immerged from the hideout soon after that back into the smog-laced gloom of day. Daxter stretched his arms over his head until his spine popped and then crossed them over his stomach, a smile on his face. Jak quicjly covered his eyes again and reluctantly suppressed his aura, rolling his shoulders uncomfortably. But he seemed lighter than he had before, just a smidge. “Well, that went pretty well!” Daxter admitted. “Though I don’t think ‘delivery boys’ is what we planned to sign up for, exactly.”

“At least we’re doing something,” Jak shrugged as he headed for the Zoomer hovering quietly at the end of the alley. The precious cargo strapped to the back looked to be wrapped in cheap brown paper held together by pieces of tape, but maybe Torn had been trying to make it look inconspicuous. Trafficking Eco was one of the highest offense in Haven City, a crime with harsher punishments than murder, and they’d be shot on sight if the KG even _suspected_ what their package might be. “South Town…that’s past the Red District, right?”

“I’m pretty sure. I’ve never been out that way before, obviously,” Daxter explained. He was actually a little excited to see that part of the city. He had heard that that’s where the night life existed, for those who couldn’t get a green pass into Main Town and the Stadium, anyway. There wasn’t really much in the way of entertainment here in the slums except toil in general misery. Sometimes you might see a kid or two playing tag or hide and seek, but that was a rare thing. It just wasn’t all that safe for kids to be running around unsupervised with trigger-happy KG prowling the streets, and most kids were too busy trying to stay unseen whilst picking pockets in a vain attempt to help out their families. It would be interesting to see a part of the city where, maybe, people weren’t in a constant and impenetrable state of misery. “I hear the food actually tastes like something!”

“Anything tastes better than the slop at the prison,” Jak commented lightly as he slipped onto the Zoomer. “I swear that stuff was an experiment gone wrong.”

“We should grab somethin’ on our way back,” the younger elf suggested as he slid onto the Zoomer behind Jak. Maybe his friend hadn’t meant anything by the comment, but Daxter felt like a bucket of ice cold water had been dumped down his back. He would have to file that little tidbit of information on his steadily growing list of reasons why he needed to beat Baron Praxis to a bloody pulp the first chance he got. He was just glad that Jak couldn’t see his murderous expression. Daxter rarely ever got _mad_ – no, Daxter _never_ got mad. Ever. Annoyed? Yes. A little infuriated? Maybe. But this was the kind of anger bordering on ‘Jak-caught-in-the-middle-of-a-bloodbath’ mad. But Jak had enough anger for the both of them; he didn’t need to deal with Daxter’s on top of everything else. So he would hide it, like he hid a lot of things under light comments and sarcastic remarks. “Yakow burgers, on me!”

Daxter wasn’t really all that much of a meat person, but Jak _needed_ to experience the glory of Yakow burgers. Of all the many things Haven City had to offer, Yakow burgers were the absolute only one worth mentioning as far as Daxter was concerned. The younger teen wrapped his arms around Jak’s waist as his pale friend revved the engine. Hopefully they wouldn’t get lost trying to find the port. They already looked suspicious enough with their hastily-wrapped package and Jak’s shoddy disguise, and wandering around the industrial section looking confused would only draw attention to them…not to mention all the extra Krimzon Guard patrols that were out and about…

“Hey, Daxter?” the fiery-haired teen glanced up to see Jak…smiling at him over his shoulder. But not a good smile – rather, the most terrifying smile Daxter had ever seen. Because this was a very familiar smile. This was the smile Jak had shot him the day Jak had poked that wumpbee’s nest on his ninth birthday and the two of them had nearly been stung to death. This was the smile Jak had shot him when he had dragged Daxter into the jungle temple for the first time and the two of them had almost been eaten alive by a giant plant. This was the smile Jak had shot him that night Daxter had climbed into the boat with him to go to Misty Island – and, yes, in retrospect it was probably a good thing they had gone, but _still_. Daxter didn’t have to see Jak’s eyes to know they were sparkling with mischief. Nothing good had ever come from that smile.

“How fast can these babies go?”

“No!” Daxter snapped immediately, face paling in horror. Jak’s smile only grew, sadistic jerk. “No way! We’re supposed to be keepin’ a low profile, remember?”

The engine roared ominously beneath him, and Daxter instinctually buried his finers into Jak’s shirt. “Don’t do it, Jak! Don’t do it!” he warned as threateningly as he could when his voice was stuck up an entire octave. “You’ve got your whole life ahead of ya! _I’ve_ got my whole life ahead of me! We ca – AAAH!”

Jak chuckled under his breath as he peeled out of the alleyway and tore down the street. He knew he was being reckless and crazy and stupid, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t explain why, but he felt… _good_. He had been riding a high since he and Daxter had blown up part of the prison and he still hadn’t come down. Yesterday, for the first time in a long while, he had felt like more than some sort of rabid monster just barely clinging to control; he had started to feel more like himself. Blowing up the ammo hadn’t been that much more dangerous than a lot of the messes Jak had gotten Daxter and himself into when they were younger. It felt good to be doing _something_. It felt good to know that Daxter was here with him, acting as the voice of reason even if Jak was disinclined to listen to his advice.

He felt…free soaring down the dusty streets of Haven City with the wind blowing through his hair and his best friend’s arms wrapped tightly around his waist. For the first time, his freedom felt 100% _real_. A part of Jak had been tensed, braced for the moment when he realized that all of this was just an elaborate dream – that Daxter had never actually rescued him from prison. That part of him finally relaxed as Jak barreled sharply around a corner and slipped through the red force field that separated the industrial section of the city from the slums, Daxter’s scream of terror and outrage trailing behind them. It didn’t mean that Jak had suddenly lost his anger. No, it was still there simmering barely a hair’s breadth under the surface of his skin. But now there was something more there than just the anger and the blood-soaked thirst for revenge. He felt like he was waking up…

Of course his reckless driving and Daxter’s screams eventually drew attention. Not long after they zoomed into the grey-walled labyrinth of the industrial section, which Jak vaguely remembered from when he had first arrived in Haven City, swarms of Krimzon Guards appeared on Hellcat Zoomers and Cruisers. He dodged through the blur of red and bullets with his fangs bared in a grin that was less homicidal failed experiment and more rebellious, thrill-seeking adolescent. Behind him, Daxter was screaming at him over the roar of the wind, promising him a slow and excruciating death as soon as their lives weren’t in peril. But, thankfully, two years locked up hadn’t been enough for him to lose his flying skills. Jak was too fast for the Krimzon Guard, even with their fancier vehicles. He dodged around poles and around bridges and other Zoomers faster than the KG could keep up.

Maybe they would have gotten to the port faster if Jak had actually known where he was going, but half the fun was managing to escape a swarm of Guards after getting himself caught into a corner. But by the time Jak peeled out of the dark maze of buildings into the blinding light of day, he had left the army of Krimzon Guards in the dust. It was a good thing, too, because right then they would have made a very easy target. Jak didn’t know what he’d been expecting when Daxter had told him Haven City had a port. He’d known what a port _was_ , from his Uncle’s stories, but the closest he’d ever experienced were the docks at Sandover. This, though...it was almost strange to see so much open space after so long. Water stretched out before them, darker and dirtier than the water back home but infinitely cleaner looking than the muck in the water slums. The sun was actually peeking through the smog clouds, illuminating the many people milling along the street by the water’s edge and the vehicles soaring through the air, which were painted in brighter colors than the ones in the slums.

It didn’t take long to find the Hip Hog Heaven Saloon. The giant mechanical Hip Hog sitting above the door was a big enough clue, and a little creepy in Jak’s opinion. The store’s name flashed at him in bright, purple neon and graffiti covered every nearby inch of wall. For the first time, Jak wondered exactly what a ‘saloon’ was and what exactly went on in such places. The pale teen eyed the building suspiciously as he slid off of the Zoomer, but he turned when he heard an exasperated groan of frustration.

“You…” Daxter wheezed as he slid off of the Zoomer and stumbled toward the saloon to lean heavily against the wall. The glare he sent the pale teen laughing warmly at him could have sunk ships, could have demolished buildings, but Jak was immune to it. He had seen it too many times over the long years of their friendship to be effected by it any more. “Just you wait! As soon as I get my legs back, you’re gonna get it! Mark my words, Jak!”

“Come on, Dax, it wasn’t that bad,” Jak offered with a smile as Daxter came at him with fists raised. He blocked a few half-hearted punches before Daxter finally through his hands in the air and gave up. The younger teen continued to glower at him, but all Jak could do was smile. He could seem to help himself, couldn’t have wiped the stupid grin off of his face even if he’d tried. After a moment, Daxter’s glare stumbled, tripped, and finally fell with a roll of his eyes.

“Ah, you know I can’t stay mad at you, big guy,” the old nickname rolled so easily off Daxter’s tongue even though, technically, he was the bigger of the two of them at the moment. He would have to make some sort of effort to point that out to the older teen at some point. He had to milk this for all it was worth. “Let’s just hurry up and get rid o’ this stuff.”

Walking into the Hip Hog Heaven Saloon was like taking a step from night to day, and not just because the inside of the establishment was so dark. Compared to the dust and grime of the slums, this place was actually kind of nice. The room was lit by dim lights and the glow of green neon signs. Blue lit booths lined the walls on either side, tucked away in private niches. The center of the room was dominated by a small boxing ring, and trophies made from Metal Head skulls adorned every wall side by side with posters of scantily clad, busty ladies. So caught up in the strange decorations, Jak almost didn’t notice the elf leaning against the wall not far from the front counter. The elf was obviously a warrior, but for some reason the thought of an obviously armed and dangerous stranger wasn’t setting off any of Jak’s alarm bells. It wasn’t just the fact that this guy obviously wasn’t with the Krimzon Guard. To be honest, Jak wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but he had never seen an elf like this before. For one, he had seemed to have some sort of small machine where his right eye should be – a prosthetic of some sort. And though Jak had seen red elves and green elves, blue elves and yellow elves, and even grey elves, he had never seen a brown elf before.

The heavily-armed elf watched them closely as they walked further into the building and finally stepped away from the wall when they had come close enough, holding up his gun in a way that Jak figured was more a display than anything else. Like, he _could_ beat Jak and Daxter to within an inch of their lives, but he would really prefer not to.

“Let me handle this, Jak.” The older teen raised an eyebrow when Daxter placed a hand on his shoulder and swaggered in front of him with a confidence the young elf seemed to have pulled out of nowhere. He just hoped the fiery youth had the sense not to piss of a guy with a gun bigger than _he_ was. “Watch my finesse and style.”

“Don’t forget to ask about-…”

“Everything’s cool, nobody panic,” Daxter smiled over his shoulder at Jak and kept walking. He figured, as the one who had more experience in…shady activities, that he should probably do the talking. As he passed the elf who was obviously guarding the empty bar, he flashed him a grin as well, successfully hiding the fact that he was scared out of his wits. That was a _Peacemaker_ in his hands, for Precursor’s sakes. He didn’t know what one of those things would do to Jak, but one shot of that and Daxter would be a twitching corpse on the bar floor before he knew what hit him. “Hey, big guy.”

But all his false bravado flew out of the window when the elf’s boss literally flew into view. Daxter had heard a few things about Krew. He’d heard he ran a real cutthroat operation that dealt a lot in smuggled ore, weapons, and bribery, and that those who worked with him tended to disappear after a while no matter how good they were. But no one had ever mentioned what Krew looked like. While the rest of Haven City had been starving, Krew apparently hadn’t missed a meal, but Daxter supposed being one of the most powerful elves in the city had its benefits. He had bejeweled himself with earrings, fat, shiny rings and fancy baubles, but no amount of ornamentation could hide the fact that he smelled worse than the water slums on the hottest day in summer after a sewage backup – and Daxter wasn’t even within five feet of him yet. It was going to take all his charm and grace to get through this meeting without ‘accidentally’ offending someone who could probably orchestrate their deaths with a snap of his fingers.


	8. Chapter 8

“You Krew?” Daxter gathered up as much confidence as he could and shoved it into his drawl, hoping it could cover the fact that he was about two seconds away from imploding with fear. If he showed even the slightest hint that he was afraid, a crime lord like Krew would eat him alive. Possibly literally, the teen thought with a suppressed shudder. “Well, we shook the heat, and your shipment’s in _primo_ condition!”

“That’s good, ‘ey, because a bag of Eco ore is worth more than _ten_ of your lives,” Krew wheezed at them, carelessly allowing the foul stench of his breath to taint the air around him. Daxter glared at the elf behind his back as he floated into Jak’s admittedly small personal space bubble and practically panted in his face. There was just something about this guy that rubbed Daxter the wrong way. Maybe it was the fact that he smelt even worse than the weird hermit who lived at the swamp by Rock Village (which was saying something). Maybe it was because Daxter was pretty sure this guy’s idea of a light brunch could feed the entirety of the slums for a whole month, and he obviously didn’t care. Maybe it was because Daxer just had a habit of disliking new people on principal. Either way, alarm bells were going off in the back of Daxter’s mind, and his instincts had never, ever steered him wrong before. Now, if only people would actually _listen_ to his instincts once in a while… “Mm…And of course I’d be forced to collect…slowly.”

Yep, a real sleazeball if Daxter had ever seen one.

Krew circled around Jak as he chuckled to himself, his beady eyes (well, eye – he seemed to have gone blind in one of them) glinting malevolently. The pale teen turned with him to keep the elf in his sight, which wasn’t all that hard to do when he – no. No. There were just some things that were too mean even for Daxter to think. “The Underground will take anyone with a pulse these days.”

Jak merely glared impassively behind his goggles, but Daxter saw the way his fingers twitched at his sides. He really didn’t want to find out what would happen if Jak ‘accidentally’ slaughtered the crime lord of the city. Maybe, with their boss dead, the scum of Haven City would be too disorganized (or maybe too grateful) to seek retribution, but, more likely than not, the two teenagers would find themselves full of bullet holes in the middle of the night. Or the bodyguard standing not three feet away would just blow them away with that modified Peacemaker of his. Visions of charred and twitching corpses dancing before his eyes, Daxter quickly stepped forward and placed a hand on Jak’s shoulder.

“What’s this? The Underground’s junior recruits?” Krew remarked with a sneer, but then his beady little eyes lit up. “Hmmm…Not such a bad idea, ‘ey. I should start recruiting much younger. Young minds are so much easier to…ah, mold. What do you think, Sig?”

“Listen, uh, tons of fun,” that’s not what Daxter meant to say, at all, but his nonexistent filter was even more blatantly absent when he was nervous. No problem, maybe Krew hadn’t noticed the slip up? Maybe he was glaring at him for some other reason? “Anyone can see that you, uh, and I have the real juice in this burg. We’re both players, right? We’re both lookin’ for a piece of the action, right? I think we can do business…right?”

By the time Daxter’s mouth finally decided it had said enough, his legs had decided it would be a very good idea to cower behind Jak. Even if it was a bit harder to hide effectively behind him, Daxter knew the safest place in the world was approximately fourteen and a half inches behind Jak – close enough to still be in Jak’s Sphere of Protection while giving himself enough room to flee should things go south. Because Daxter had a bad feeling things were about to go south. Krew shared a look with his bodyguard that could have been incredulity or could have been a signal that his two unwanted guests needed to be escorted out of his establishment and to the bottom of the harbor, and with Daxter’s luck it had probably been the latter.

In front of him, Jak rolled his eyes and ran a gloved hand over his face. He didn’t like the elf floating in front of him anymore than Daxter did, though for different reasons. There was something about Krew that made his proverbial hackles rise. It was the same sort of feeling Jak had gotten from Kor – the feeling that not everything was quite right. But, to be honest, he was feeling a little suspicious of anyone who wasn’t Daxter-shaped these days. It also didn’t help that he was starting to feel claustrophobic. There were no windows in the saloon and not a lot of space to move around in, and the neon lighting was starting to remind Jak of the sickly green lighting of the prison block. “We did you a favor, now it’s your turn,” the pale teen snapped, eager to hurry things along. “Why is the Baron giving Eco to Metal Heads?”

Behind Jak, Daxter let out a plaintive whine as Krew’s face twisted into a hideous snarl. This was it. This was the end. Goodbye, cruel world, it was nice knowing you. “Questions like that could get a person _killed_ , ‘ _ey_!” the big elf spat (literally – Daxter was pretty sure he saw spit flying) before turning to the heavily armored bodyguard in the corner. “Sig, pay ‘ _el Capitán_ ’ here and his friend _bonus_ …”

In front of him, Jak tensed and unconsciously bared his fanged teeth as ‘Sig’ swaggered forward, the barrel of his Peacemaker glowing ominously in the dim lighting. There was no way the guy was actually going to _use_ that gun in this tiny, little establishment, though, right? The Peacemaker wasn’t exactly the most precise weapon. Why bother with precision when you could take everything out in a twenty foot radius? Daxter placed a shaking hand on Jak’s shoulder, but he didn’t know how that was supposed to help. If Jak decided to go wild and attack, there wasn’t much Daxter’s noodle arm could do about it. And what was he going to do – tug him out of the way of an explosion big enough to destroy the entire building? Daxter wondered what it would feel like to be blown away by a Peacemaker. Would he actually feel anything at all, or would it be over before he could even blink? Heck, maybe it would be like that time in the spider caves and Jak would just soak up all the Eco.

And…go berserk with bloodlust and wipe out half the city.

The fiery-haired teen opened his mouth to say…something. Maybe to try and diffuse the situation before it was too late. Maybe to tell Jak just how much he meant to him before they were both blown to smithereens. But it was too late to say anything now. Jak raised his hands and slipped into a fighting stance as Sig reached behind his back and grabbed another, smaller gun, but he didn’t aim it at them. Instead, he shoved it at them with a raised eyebrow, smirking when Daxter yelped at the sudden movement.

Jak eyed the brown-skinned elf suspiciously, but there was nothing in his face or in his posture that said this was some sort of trick. He merely watched them with a half-lidded green eye, amused smirk still firmly in place.

“If you want to see what that baby can do, try the gun course outside,” Krew suggested as Jak hesitantly took the gun in his hands. Though it was definitely smaller than Sig’s gun, it was still a hefty weapon. He wondered if this gun could shoot out lances of Eco like the ones the Krimzon Guards used. How he wouldn’t love to use their own weapons against them…He couldn’t help the demonic smile that spread across his face at the thought, and Krew offered a sickly, malevolent smile of his own. “Show me some skill with that hardware, and I’ll hire you for a job or two, ‘ey.”

The two teens practically fled from the saloon after that. Jak was eager to breath in some relatively fresh air, and Daxter was eager to get as far away from the flying creep and the guy with the Peacemaker as possible. Jak might have gotten sick kicks out of near-death experiences, but Daxter could pass. But they had made it out alive, like they always did.

“See! I told ya I would handle it!” Daxter boasted proudly, ignoring the fact that he had been hiding behind Jak half the time. Jak looked up from the gun in his hands long enough to shoot his young friend knowing smirk.

“You did a great job there, Dax.”

“I know, right! I – _heeey_!” Daxter’s grin, and ego, grew obscenely before he finally caught on to the sarcasm dripping from Jak’s voice. “Thanks to _me_ , we got ourselves a new toy. I’ve been itchin’ for one of these babies.”

The younger teen trotted closer and eyed the gun not unlike how Jak had probably eyed Keira’s new Zoomer once upon a time, or how he had eyed the cliffs by the beach before he had climbed them and almost fallen to his death. Jak held the gun a little closer to himself, unsure what to make of Daxter’s sudden eagerness to fight or the slightly manic gleam in his eyes. Not sixty seconds ago he had been cowering behind him, but maybe it made sense. Daxter’s only defense was an insignificant little dagger that probably couldn’t slice butter, and that wouldn’t do him much good in a world where enemies could gun him down from yards away. It was no wonder that he would want a half decent weapon to protect himself with.

As much as Jak would love to gun down a few people of his own (and it was actually a bit funny to think that only two years ago that thought would have horrified him), he would feel much better if he knew Daxter could take care of himself. Well, he _knew_ Daxter could take care of himself – he’d been doing so for two years, but he hadn’t been helping an escaped experiment track down and slaughter the baron of the city at the time. That didn’t mean Jak had to just _give_ the gun away, though. “Who says you get to use it?”

“I do!” Daxter replied easily as the two teens walked along the pier to the gun course next door. There seemed to be less Krimzon Guards skulking about here than there had been in the slums, and Daxter felt like he could relax for the first time in days. The sun was… _attempting_ to shine, somewhere far away from the pollution of Haven City birds might be singing, and things were going their way. For now. “You’ve got your fancy, shmancy Eco powers. Not everyone can shoot killer lightning out of our fingertips, ya know.”

The older teen glanced warily around him, but nobody seemed to have paid the careless comment any mind. The people here seemed more relaxed than the people of the slums, less wary and suspicious. Maybe living so close to a crime lord afforded them some sort of protection from Krimzon Guards, though Krew honestly didn’t seem like a much better alternative. Assured that no Guards or underhanded citizens had been listening in, Jak turned back to the fiery-haired teen. “But you could just use your amazing knife skills, instead.”

“Ha ha,” Daxter’s glare could have peeled paint if it hadn’t been for the way his eyes shined with amusement. “You’re just upset because you know I make a much better dashing hero. Don’t worry, though - the role of attractive sidekick is now up for grabs!”

Daxter grabbed the gun out of Jak’s hands and disappeared through the automatic doors of the gun course before the older teen could reply. Jak followed at a slower pace, huffing under his breath. Him, attractive? He had never really thought about it before. Things like that had never seemed very important to him. Maybe he had been, once upon a time, before the Dark Eco incident. But now? There was a reason why so many villagers had reacted to Jak’s new appearance with fear and horror, a reason why Jak was the only prisoner Guards have ever referred to as ‘it’ and ‘freak.’ Skin paler than that of a corpse. Hair the color of ash and eyes like two empty, soulless pits. Claws. Fangs. _Horns_. Jak didn’t even know what he looked like now, after two years trapped in that prison, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Probably like the walking dead. And yet Daxter didn’t seem to think so.

Jak didn’t know why he was dwelling on the comment so much. It wasn’t the first time Daxter had joked about his own looks or Jak’s looks, and it wouldn’t be the last. He did it all the time, though Daxter tended to be brutally honest – at least when it came to people other than himself. The younger elf had no qualms about informing someone about how physically unappealing he found them. Half the reason so many of the villagers back at Sandover had disliked the fiery elf was because he had a bad habit of pointing out every single one of their flaws to their face, in glaring detail. So…what? Did that mean that Daxter actually found him attractive?

Jak shook his head to dislodge the strange train of thought. There were more important things to worry about like finding a way to break into the palace and tracking down Baron Praxis, making sure their friends were alright, and finding way back home. He glanced around the small, poorly lit lobby of the gun course. Thankfully they seemed to be the only two people around, though he wouldn’t say they were completely alone. The familiar red light of security cameras winked at them from the four corners of the room, and Jak glared at them all suspiciously. There weren’t any decorations – no posters or signs or anything – and the only thing that indicated that this might be some sort of gun course and not just any old abandoned warehouse were the crates of ammo stacked in one corner. Daxter was already sitting on one of them and loading the gun with large, grey disks with small compartments filled with what looked like Red Eco.

“Have you ever used one of these before?” he asked dubiously, wary of the excited grin that split Daxter’s face from ear to ear. He wondered if this is what it felt like for Daxter every time Jak had tried to drag them off to do something ‘adventurous.’

“No, but I’ve seen plenty o’ people use ‘em before. How hard could it be? All ya do is press the trigger and -.” Whatever else Daxter had meant to say was cut off by the crack of thunder that exploded throughout the room. Across the room, a pile of crates proceeded to violently ruptured, sending cartridges of ammo and wooden debris flying. For a few moments, the only sound in the room was the pitter patter of chips of wood falling to the floor and the metallic rasp of ammo rolling about on the floor. The two teenagers stared at each other, and then down at the gun in Daxter’s hands. When they looked back up, they wore matching grins of adolescent deviousness.

“Now _that’s_ what I’m talkin’ about!” Daxter crowed, hopping off of his crate and grinning down at the weapon in his hands. “C’mon, Jak, I wanna try this thing out!”

Watching Daxter shoot was…interesting, to say the least. Jak had known the younger elf for a very long time – for as long as he could remember in fact – and he was fairly certain he had never seen this side of him. Ever. Once the starting bell rung and the wooden targets, painted to look like surprisingly humanoid Metal Heads and terrified citizens, started to appear and move about the course, a determined sort of calm seemed to settle over Daxter. Even in the depths of Gol and Maia’s citadel, the young teen hadn’t been this serious. Jak watched from a safe distance as Daxter took out target after target. The gun course echoed with the mechanical whir of unseen machinery moving the targets into place and the concussive force of the gun – a Scatter Gun, according to Daxter. He didn’t always hit every target, but he didn’t hit a single citizen.

It was strange to see the young elf so focused on something other than avoiding Samos’ chores. Dark blue eyes watched the tracks in the floor unblinkingly, finger perched on the trigger and ready to fire at the slightest hint of a blue and grey target. The grin from before had shrunken slightly into more of a smirk, but his eyes still glinted with the same eager fire as minutes before and only seemed to grow with every target blown to pieces. The farther along the course they got the more confident Daxter became, loosening up and finally filling the silence with prideful commentary and insults towards his defenseless wooden enemies.

Jak watched, and he wondered why things already seemed so different from their last adventure. And the more he watched Daxter, the more the answer seemed to come to him. Daxter had grown. It wasn’t just that he had grown physically – that much was obvious. He didn’t think he would ever get used to looking _up_ at Daxter. But despite how hard life in Haven City seemed to be, Daxter had filled out pretty well. The gangly, scrawny boy who could have blown away in a strong breeze was gone, replaced by a full-fledged teenager who could sneak through prisons crawling with guards completely unseen and apparently had pretty could aim with a gun that was the size of and contained the destructive capacity of a small child. There was lithe muscle where there had never been any before, and Jak often wondered how it had gotten there. Daxter chattered on and on about how bad Haven City was, but he carefully skirted around his own personal experiences.

But Daxter had grown in other, more important ways. Daxter had come along with him to find Gol, and later to stop Gol and Maia, because that was what Daxter did. He followed Jak, and threw good sense at him that Jak never paid much attention to, and tried to make sure that nothing too bad happened. He followed because Jak was his best friend, and he wasn’t about to let the older boy do anything dangerous and stupid without someone nearby to sprint for help if he ended up concussed or worse. And he followed, Jak suspected, because he secretly had fun on their death-defying adventures more often than not. The key word, though, was ‘follow.’

This Daxter, who was now cackling a bit maniacally as they reached the end of the course, was not following Jak. Not really. Yes, he had promised to help Jak track down Baron Praxis, but Jak was starting to wonder if Daxter wouldn’t have done that on his own even if Jak hadn’t wanted it. There was an anger there, under the smiles and the jokes and the sarcastic comments, that hadn’t been there two years ago. Now that Daxer had a weapon he felt confident with, Jak knew he wouldn’t be cowering in the background any longer. Well, probably a little. Daxter was the soul of caution, after all; that hadn’t changed. But Jak felt like they were more on equal footing now. He would always protect Daxter, whether the younger boy felt like he needed it or not, but anyone would be making a fatal mistake if they underestimated Daxter.

Twenty minutes later, Daxter shot down the last cluster of targets with a fury that showered them both in little specs of chipped wood. The computerized voice programmed into the course dispassionately informed them of Daxter’s score.

“Seven thousand points!” Daxter cheered, throwing his fist into the air. When he turned to look back at Jak, his smile was almost disgustingly smug, but Jak could tell he was nervous. Nervous of what, exactly, he didn’t know. “Whattdya say to _that_?”

“Not bad shooting, Dax,” the pale teen conceded with a smile, reaching out without thinking to ruffle his friend’s hair. It wasn’t until his claws were already buried in the yellow and red locks that it dawned on him how long it had been since he’d done something as simple as this. It hit him then, like a knife in the back, how much he missed Sandover. How much he missed lazy days on the beach hiding from Samos and his list of chores; missed the pointless, childish adventures they had gone one; how easy life had been. And it dawned on Jak, more profoundly now than ever, that no matter what happened Daxter would still be there. Whether or not they tracked down the Baron, whether or not they found Samos and Keira, whether or not they stopped the Metal Head apocalypse, Daxter would be there.

The expression on Daxter’s face softened into something surprisingly rare. It wasn’t one of his smug grins, or one of his sarcastic smirks. It was just a simple, genuine smile.

He should really smile like that more often…

Daxter suddenly looked away, first down at the gun still in his hands and then conspicuously off to the side. “We should probably head back to Krew’s.”

“He didn’t exactly seem eager to talk,” Jak commented wryly. With the way he had reacted to Jak’s question (demand, really), he had expected a fight, not a new gun. But maybe it was for the best if he didn’t understand the way a sick mind like Krew’s worked. In any case, he’d prefer to stay as far away as possible from the Hip Hog Heaven Saloon.

“Yea, ‘cause he can’t trust us as far as he can throw us – which ain’t all that far unless he’s secretly hiding muscle under all that…” Daxter couldn’t even finish his sentence, nose wrinkling as he shuddered at the memory of the elf. “But if we work for ‘im, maybe he’ll let somethin’ slip? And who could say no to pay like _this_?”

He slung the gun over his shoulder as he said it and, like that, the familiar smirk was back. Jak did admit he had a compelling argument. And according to Torn, Krew had connections all throughout the city, so maybe helping him would take them one step closer to the Baron. Though he had a feeling the next few jobs wouldn’t be as easy as making a speedy delivery. The walk back to the saloon passed in amiable silence – on Jak’s part. Daxter filled the short walk with boastful comments about his shooting prowess and his natural skill. Jak was content to listen, and to snort derisively when Daxter’s comments got _too_ outlandish. Krew was waiting for them as soon as they walked through the door.

“That wasn’t bad shooting,” the elf commented somewhat reluctantly as they entered the saloon, floating toward them from the other side of the room. His pale, skinny legs dangled uselessly below him, and Jak wondered how long ago it had been since Krew had actually _walked_. He didn’t question how the crime boss had known about Daxter’s shooting skills. Wired into the city, indeed. “Ever thought about being a Wastelander? Hmmm?”

“I _may_ have considered it,” Daxter replied casually, examining his fingernails and trying, and failing, to hide the fact that he had absolutely no idea what a Wastelander was. From Krew’s disbelieving snort, he wasn’t buying the ruse, either.

“Wastelanders find items outside the city walls, ‘ey. Any artifact or weapon worth having comes through _my_ hands. Work for me, and I’ll throw some of the sweeter items your way, hmmm?”

Jak shared a look with Daxter, who looked an interesting mixture between resigned, excited, and determined. If nothing else, working for Krew should provide them with some action at least. To be honest, despite how good Jak had been feeling lately, there was an itch under his skin he really needed to scratch. Walking past dozens upon dozens of Krimzon Guards every day, hearing them march past the window at night, and not being able to _do_ anything was starting to get to him. Maybe taking out his anger on a few Metal Heads would make him feel better. “Kill Metal Heads, get toys? Sounds good to me.”

“Do we _really_ need to go _outside_ the walls? There are apparently plenty of Metal Heads inside the city!” Daxter whined without much hope. He could already tell Jak was warming up to the idea, and the Oracle’s message still echoed loud and clear in the back of Daxter’s mind. He and Jak had been lucky so far, all things considered. No Krimzon Guards had come after them after that bloodbath on Jak’s first day of freedom, and the Eco-saturated ten had managed to restrain himself from mauling any of the KG that patrolled the streets even though his young friend had seen the way he eyed them when their backs were turned. Luck wouldn’t be on their side forever, though. Jak needed the Oracle’s training, and they had to get Metal Had skull gems from somewhere.

Krew gave the two teens one last onceover before floating away dismissively. “Sig will show you the ropes.”

Sig…Sig was not what either of the two teens had been expecting. Even though Jak hadn’t exactly been getting threatening vibes from the guy, he certainly hadn’t expected him to be so _friendly_. He had a way about him that immediately set Jak at ease. Maybe because it was hard to feel threatened by someone who called him a “chili pepper,” no matter how huge or heavily armed they were. Sig was unlike anyone Jak or Daxter had met, and his warm nature seemed out of place among the jaded souls of Haven City. They left the saloon with plans to wake up early and meet the Wastelander at the pumping station, which had apparently become infested with some of the nastier types of Metal Heads. Jak was actually looking forward to it. It was nice to finally meet someone decent in this rat hole of a city. Not to say that Torn wasn’t _decent_ , because he was proof that not all Krimzon Guards were the scum of the earth, but Jak wasn’t really looking forward to seeing him again. And a large part of him was excited to see what exactly existed on the other side of the massive walls that blocked Haven City off from the rest of the world. The way the Guards talked, it sounded like it was nothing but a barren wasteland, but Jak wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t the truth. At least, not the whole truth…

Back at Daxter’s borrowed house, the pale teen stretched out on his back on the single cot and stared up at the ceiling, mind running through everything that had happened in the last couple of days. Despite what he and Daxter had managed to accomplish, it didn’t really feel like they had made all that much progress. He didn’t feel any closer to killing the Baron than he had when he had first gotten out of prison despite the fact that they had joined the Underground and had managed to get further into the city. Yet, that didn’t bother him as much as he thought it would. The longer he was out of prison, away from that Precursors-forsaken machine and away from _Erol_ and the dark loneliness of his cell, the more he was starting to feel like his old self. Or at least less like the mindless monster that had nearly torn his friend in two…

            “Hey, Jak?”

            Daxter sounded small and scared beside him, a far cry from the loudmouth he was 99% of the time, and Jak didn’t like it one bit. He glanced over at the other teen, whose gaze was fixed determinedly on a particular brown spot on the ceiling. He looked pale, illuminated only by the stray arcs of Dark Eco that crackled around Jak lazily, and his older friend wondered if it was just the odd lighting or something else. “Yea, Dax?”

            “Do you think there’s a way back home…?”

            “…” It’s not something Jak had thought about often. Oh, he had always told himself that was what he planned to do. It was on his to-do list. Kill Praxis, find his friends, go home. But he didn’t like to think about _how_ they would go about doing that. As far as he knew, the machine they had gone through, the Rift Gate or whatever, was completely destroyed. They were lucky they hadn’t been destroyed along with it. He highly doubted there was another one of those just lying around. There was always the chance that Keira could make recreate one from memory, but even she hadn’t understood how all the parts had worked. “I don’t know, Daxter…”

            The honest answer seemed to echo about the room before it was eventually swallowed up by the silence. Just on the other side of the thin wall, the piers creaked ominously as a patrol of Krimzon Guards thundered by. The polluted water lapped at the wooden poles holding the building in place. Jak’s aura cast strange shadows around the room. Daxter took so long to respond that Jak figured the other boy had fallen asleep and started to nod off himself.

            “Hey, um…Jak?”

            That same nervousness was back, but creeping now into the tone of his voice. The same strange nervousness Jak had noticed at the gun course. “Hm…?”

            But Daxter never answered, and Jak fell asleep waiting for a reply.


	9. Chapter 9

It was two o’clock in the morning, and Daxter couldn’t sleep.

It wasn’t that Daxter wasn’t tired. Daxter would much prefer to be passed out right about now than sitting propped up against the wall in a corner of the shack with his arms wrapped around his knees. He could probably fall asleep very comfortably against the wall, if it weren’t for one tiny, simple thing.

The pale-skinned teenager currently writhing and snarling about five feet away on the single cot.

Now, usually, under ‘normal’ circumstances, Daxter wouldn’t have been terrified completely out of his mind by such a sight. He was used to Jak’s violent tendencies by this point and knew, deep down, that the older teen wouldn’t consciously hurt him. But therein lied the problem. Jak was passed out, trapped in the throes of some sort of nightmare, and Daxter had come within about three centimeters of having his face ripped off by a set of flailing claws. Instead of burying themselves into flesh, talon-like ebony claws had attacked the mattress with a ferocity that had sent ancient stuffing flying and had had Daxter scrambling across the room. Purple lightning crackled violently around the room, snapping and hissing but thankfully not actually burning anything. Despite the fact that Jak was practically doing cartwheels in the bed, his eyes were clenched shut and Daxter realized, after wasting precious seconds trying to calm Jak down from a relatively safe distance by shouting at him, that he was somehow still asleep.

He didn’t know what he was supposed to do. There were a _lot_ of things Daxter would do for Jak, but getting mauled in a pathetic attempt to wake the other boy up was not one of them. And wouldn’t it just be swell for Jak to wake up from a horrible nightmare to see Daxter’s lacerated corpse? But Daxter couldn’t just _leave_ him like that. He didn’t know what Jak was dreaming about, but he could guess. In the years that the two teens had shared his uncle’s small hut, Jak had never once had a nightmare. He hadn’t been afraid of anything – not giant carnivorous plants or Lurker sharks or anything that would terrify most normal individuals with self-preservation instincts. Any nightmares to be had had all been Daxter’s, and even then they had never been this bad. The young elf tried to think of all the things that had helped him when he had a nightmare, but none of them applied here.

Couldn’t shake Jak awake with those claws flying around like black scythes of doom.

Shouting over the snap, crackle, and pop of the purple lightning storm wasn’t working.

Throwing something at him? No. Just no. That would backfire in a very fatal way.

And throwing a bucket of water on him was just as suicidal, not to mention that Daxter wouldn’t throw the muck in the water slums on his worst enemy.

Which meant that Daxter had to stand back and watch while Jak suffered and he couldn’t do a single thing about it. But he could at least make sure no Krimzon Guards would get curious and try to investigate. From the boardwalk outside, it might have looked like the two teens were throwing a rave with an awesome, purple lightshow if it weren’t for the fact that the shack was far too small for two people, let alone the masses they would need for a rave, and animalistic snarling was a poor substitute for music. He threw the tattered remains of a discarded sheet over the window (and almost got clawed in the guts for his efforts), and then retreated to the other side of the room, sat on the floor, and prayed that the Guards would just think he owned a particularly nasty Crocadog. It was all Daxter could do, but he had never felt so helpless, so _useless_.

He managed to fall back asleep eventually, when the growls and snarls died down to the occasional grunt and the flailing petered to belligerent sheet-kicking. When Jak woke him up at the crack of dawn, the Daxter didn’t mention the torn sheets or the fact that he had migrated to the other side of the room some time during the night, and Jak didn’t ask. But he felt like there was some sort of tension floating around in the room that hadn’t been there before. Jak was angry with himself for some unimaginable reason, and Daxter was slowly going out of his mind with worry. As the morning rolled along through a relatively silent breakfast, that worry continued to grow and condense into a very familiar feeling in the bottom of Daxter’s gut – the feeling that something was about to go horribly and irreparably wrong, and soon.

“Do you really think this is a good idea?” Daxter asked for the third time that morning. His bad feelings had never steered him wrong before, and he was having second thoughts about crossing the only barrier that separated the last vestiges of civilized life from death by a horde of ravenous, merciless beasts. He was having second thoughts about hiring themselves out to Krew, the sleaziest man in the whole city and, therefore, on the entire planet. And he was _really_ having second thoughts about Jak fighting Metal Heads, or anything really, within shooting range of a complete stranger armed with the most powerful gun known to elfkind. The sheer number of things that could go horribly, fatally wrong was slightly nauseating, and after the terrible night they had both had he just _knew_ something bad was going to happen.

Worst case scenario? Jak went mad from bloodlust and slaughtered everything at the pumping station with his claws and Dark Eco powers, and then Sig shot them. Or Jak accidentally killed Sig, and they had to skip town to avoid Krew’s wrath and live as hermits in a Metal Head-infested wasteland. Or they’d all just get mauled by Metal Heads. Best case scenario? There _was_ no best case scenario. This was going to end in horrible, painful disaster and the worst part was that this wasn’t one of those hair-brained schemes Jak had had to drag him into – working for Krew had been _Daxter’s_ idea. He didn’t know _what_ he’d been thinking. Yes, helping Jak in his slightly homicidal quest for revenge on the people who had imprisoned and tortured him and finding Samos and Keira were the right things to do, but there had to be safer ways of going about doing them.

“You worry too much, Daxter,” Jak said from the other side of the shack, where he was busy slipping on his leather gloves and strapping his belts over his chest. The purple lightning around him crackled steadily but calmly, a far cry from the storm it had been just a few hours before. And there was a trace of familiar humor in his voice, though there definitely more tension in the line of his shoulders than had been there the day before.

“Says the guy who risks his life _on purpose_ because he thinks it’s _fun_ ,” the younger teen scowled over his shoulder at his pale friend, who managed a faint smile in response. Some of the panic drained out of Daxter at the sight of that smile, but only some.

“You can’t be mad at me this time, Dax. You wanted to work for Krew. I do want to see what’s so bad about these Metal Heads.” Daxter turned away and rolled his eyes when that smile started to turn into a smirk. It was good to see Jak excited about something other than murdering a fellow elf with his bare claws, but it was still the thought of murdering _something_ that was putting a smile on Jak’s face. The thought made Daxter feel as if he’d swallowed a box of razors. He was no stranger to Jak’s bloodlust. He had fought side by side with Jak as he had torn Lurkers limb from limb with a macabre grin on his face. Jak had always felt guilty afterward; guilty for spilling the blood of another living thing, even if that living thing had been hell-bent on destroying the world. But Jak hadn’t felt a shred of guilt after killing any of those Krimzon Guards in the prison. He hadn’t felt anything for the elves underneath the armor, and Daxter didn’t know what to think about that – tried not to think about it.   

But it was impossible. How could he not lay awake at night trying to figure out _what had happened_ to Jak to make him like this?

Daxter wanted to _help_ Jak. After two years being tortured in a prison, blowing up prisons and slaughtering Metal Heads did not strike the young elf as steps onto the road of recovery, but in a roundabout way he knew this was the only way to help Jak. Because he _knew_ Jak, homicidal version of him or not. Jak needed to be doing _something_ , always. Laying low in the shack to avoid the Guards while Daxter continued the search for their friends was not going to fly with the thrill-seeking teen. And, like it or not, it seemed like they were slowly getting roped into solving this world’s problems. Jak had always liked helping others and, no matter what he might have told the Oracle, Daxter had seen the way he looked at the people of Haven City. Jak wanted to help these people.

It gave Daxter hope. Jak still cared about other people. And maybe the more they helped out around here, the more he would realize that just because a guy was wearing a Krimzon Guard suit didn’t make him expendable. Didn’t mean that _somebody_ wouldn’t miss him when he was gone. And, yea, the sooner they got the Oracle some skull gems, the sooner Jak could get a better handle on his powers and controlling himself. Hopefully.

But that was the problem right there. Jak could barely control himself, and yet they planned to go Metal Head hunting with a guy they didn’t even know. Did Jak really expect to fight today and be able to hold back his Dark Eco at the same time? Just because Sig wasn’t a Krimzon Guard didn’t mean that he could be trusted, especially if he was Krew’s right hand. There was no telling what would happen if he found out about Jak’s Eco powers. And that’s only if he lived to talk about it. The only reason Jak hadn’t skewered Daxter was because they had known each other since the dawn of time – but Sig had no such insurance. He didn’t know how Jak would react to killing an ‘innocent,’ but Daxter wasn’t entirely sure he’d be able to look at Jak quite the same again.

“I’ve been thinkin’…maybe you should just let me do the fighting today, huh?” the fiery-haired teen threw over his shoulder as nonchalantly as possible. This was a topic that needed to be approached delicately, after all. He could already feel Jak staring holes into his back.

“You’re probably right.”

“It’s just that we’re supposed t’ be keepin’ low,” Daxter continued, oblivious to the teen rolling his eyes and smiling at his back. He had to get through this or he might not have the guts to say it. “Which is kinda hard when you’re sort of a giant purple lightning bolt with fangs -.”

“I know.”

“- and I don’t know about you, but I don’t wanna be on the wrong end of a Peacemaker.”

Behind the orange-haired teen, who was apparently on a roll, Jak shook his head and busied himself with strapping on his boots. He already knew what Daxter was going to say and he knew that every single bit of it was true. If it was just the two of them, that would be one thing. Jak could trust himself not to hurt Daxter, and he wouldn’t have to hold back around him. But he didn’t know Sig at all, and he couldn’t risk ripping him to shreds just because he was itching to go out and fight ( _maimkillbreaktear_ ) something. He could wait a little longer. If he could restrain himself from attacking the Krimzon Guards that glared at him from seemingly every nook and cranny, then he could stop himself from killing a few Metal Heads. It would probably be a lot safer for everyone involved if Jak just stayed behind and waited for Daxter to come back.

But that wasn’t going to happen.

“It’s not you, it’s m - …wait, _hold on a second_ ,” Daxter whipped around suddenly as Jak’s words finally sunk in and he stared at his friend incredulously. Daxter was completely flummoxed. Not confused, not ‘thrown off,’ not surprised. _Flummoxed_. Here he had thought that he would have to fight tooth and nail to get Jak to agree with him only to ultimately fail and have to do damage control when something inevitably went wrong. The younger boy glared at the that pale teen stared back at him with a raised eyebrow and tried to find some sort of sign that this was all a trick. Daxter couldn’t have been wrong. Jak actually taking precautions? Considering the possible consequences of his actions and their impact on other people? _Agreeing_ with _Daxter_? It was too good to be true. “Are you sure you’re alright…?”

“I’m fine, Dax,” Jak said with a light shrug. Or at least he would be after they brought the skull gems to the Oracle, he hoped, because he was starting to get worried. He had honestly been proud of the way he had been able to hold himself back these past couple of days, though he knew it wouldn’t have been possible at all if it hadn’t been for Daxter being there to keep his mind off of…other things. But last night…there was a reason Jak had been putting off sleep.

He had never worried about his dreams in prison. At first they had bothered him, sure. Dreams about ripping Guards limb from limb and cackling over their corpses. Dreams of burying his claws into a Guard’s chest and watching the life slowly bleed out of his eyes. Dreams of all the things he’d like to do to Erol once he finally got his hands on him. But as the reality that he would probably never, ever escape from the prison had slowly sunk in, the dreams had bothered him less and less until he had eventually started to thrive on them, his violent dreams being one of the few things that kept him going. When Daxter had broken him out of prison, he hadn’t had a chance in the world of holding himself back from finally doing all the terrible things he had dreamed about for so long, and he had enjoyed every bloody second of it. And he had enjoyed it just as much the second time around, when they had blown up part of the prison. But the nice thing about reality was that he couldn’t do everything in the real world that he could in his dreams. Elves were frail things that could only withstand so much.

But in his dreams he could do all sorts of vicious, creative things without worrying about his victims escaping through death. But Jak wasn’t in prison anymore. He wasn’t safely locked behind the bars of a cell, unable to hurt anyone. He was free, and yet he wasn’t. He had to constantly hold himself in check. What disturbed Jak most about his dreams wasn’t what he did in the dreams themselves. It was the fact that his dreams didn’t disturb him like they should. The fact that, when he had woken up this morning, he hadn’t felt an ounce of disgust for all the despicable things he had imagined he’d done. Daxter probably thought he had had a nightmare, but that couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

Jak hated the bloodlust because, despite the fact that it was so vile, it made him feel… _alive_. That had been its roll for two years. It had kept him alive. But he didn’t need it anymore. He didn’t want to be the pale-skinned monster that reveled in the sight of blood, and he didn’t need to be anymore. Because he had something better than bloodshed, better than any high he could get from killing other people.

“You’re right. Until I can control myself I probably shouldn’t do all that much fighting,” Jak admitted, managing to choke out the words only because the look of sheer disbelief on Daxter’s face was so priceless. “What? I can be sensible when I want to be.”

“What happened to ‘sensible’ three years ago when you decided to go frolicking in the one place Samos told us not to go!” Daxter demanded, storming across the room to poke the smirking teen in the chest. “Or any o’ the other times we almost _died_?”

“You didn’t almost die on Misty Island,” Jak replied. The whole reason Jak was full of Dark Eco was because he had almost accidentally blown himself up trying to make sure Daxter didn’t die, not that he was about to point that out.

“That’s not the point and you know it,” Daxter grumbled half-heartedly, still eyeing his friend suspiciously. This conversation was not going at all how he’d planned. He should have been happy that Jak was agreeing with him, but it just made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Before he could say anything else, Jak slapped a hand on his shoulder as he walked past him toward the door, almost knocking him over in the process.

“We’re gonna be late if we don’t leave now. I can’t wait to see you taking on Metal Heads.”

Metal Heads. Right. Because if Jak wasn’t going to be helping out, Daxter was the only one who was going to be ‘protecting’ Sig. He didn’t even want to imagine what kind of nasty beasts a guy like Sig needed protecting from. But he was glad that whatever funk Jak had been in seemed to be wearing off.

If only Daxter could say the same for the haze of trepidation and despair that lurked in the back of his mind. He should be used to things going wrong whenever he and Jak were involved. It wasn’t exactly anything knew.

Still, was _one_ boring, adventure-free day really too much to ask?

 

-x-

 

It was thankfully only a five minute walk to the pumping station. The door that led outside of the city walls was located in the water slums not far from ‘Daxter’s’ house. The young teen had been nervous about the door when he’d first arrived in Haven City, worried that Metal Heads would come crawling through it in the middle of the night. After a few uneventful weeks had passed, Daxter had eventually gotten over the fear, but now that fear might slowly be creeping back. He had thought it would be harder for a citizen to get out of Haven City. As difficult as it was to go from one district to another, leaving the city entirely should have been nearly impossible. But the six foot thick metal door grinded open for them easily enough, and Jak and Daxter stepped into the small metal room on the other side. When the door behind them closed, the one in front of them immediately started to open. There were no Guards, and seemingly no security cameras, but there had to be _some_ kind of security. Maybe there was some sort of sensor that figured out whether they were Metal Heads or not.

Daxter readjusted the heavy gun strapped to his back and glanced to the elf beside him as he waited for the door to open. The pale teen’s arms were folded over his stomach as he leaned on one foot, staring intently at the door. His aura was more or less suppressed, but Daxter thought he could see little tongues of purple lightning curling silently around the bottom of his boots, not really noticeable if you didn’t know what to look for. His eyes were hidden behind his goggles, but during the course of the morning the tension that had been there before had eased completely out of Jak’s shoulders. The corner of his mouth was twitching like a smile was trying to break through. And it wasn’t the ‘Yes, I finally get to knock some skulls’ smirk that Daxter had been seeing a lot lately. It was something brighter.

As the massive gears on the door in front stuttered to a halt and the door started to slowly grind open, Daxter pried his gaze back to the sight in front of him. He honestly wasn’t sure what to expect on the other side of the wall. It was hard for him to imagine what a wasteland would be like when he had grown up in a place like Sandover. To him, Haven City was a wasteland, so he couldn’t imagine anything much worse. The closest he could think of was Misty Island – a craggy, lifeless rock covered in bones and black sand. But what greeted him on the other side of the door wasn’t anything like Misty Island, and wasn’t at all what Daxter had been expecting. After two years of living in the slums of Haven City, he felt like he had been starting to forget what green looked like. Not the green of a sweater or a brightly painted Zoomer, but the green of growing things. He never thought he could miss a color so much.

But standing there in front of him, swaying in the morning breeze, was a pam tree. An actual tree, with bright green leaves, surrounded by actual bushes and grass and…sand. White, fluffy sand. Not dust. Not dirt. But sand. The teen rubbed at his eyes, wondering if he wasn’t hallucinating from lack of sleep, but the green didn’t disappear. He took a step out onto the sand and couldn’t believe how familiar it felt beneath his feet. The ocean roared on either side of him, a deep dark blue that wasn’t as familiar but close enough to make his chest feel oddly tight. Daxter had tried not to think about home too much over the past couple of years. He didn’t think he’d have been able to survive if he’d constantly been thinking of how much he missed the smell of fresh air, or the call of seagulls, or the feeling of grass on his sandaled feet. This was a far cry from Sentinel Beach, sure, with the machinery for the pumping station roaring away, but still. Homesickness hit him like a punch in the throat, but he couldn’t let it show. Sig was waiting for them by the tree and one thing Daxter had learned while living in Haven City was that you should never, ever show weakness around people twice your size with guns the size of small Yakows.

He stepped further onto the beach, unable to stop a smile at the familiar sound of sand shifting beneath his feet, but froze when he realized he didn’t hear a matching set of footsteps behind him. Jak was still standing in the massive doorway, a clawed hand hanging onto the frame as he stared out at the beach in front of him. Daxter didn’t need to see his eyes behind his goggles to know they were as wide as saucers right now. At least Daxter had had the freedom to go outside, even if nature wasn’t exactly blooming in Haven City. But this had to be much bigger for Jak, who had only just recently felt something as simple as sunshine again for the first time in years a few days ago. The look of awe on Jak’s face, even hidden by the goggles as it was, was enough to make Jak look ages younger. To look less like the hardened, angry teen that had spent years imprisoned and more like the happy-go-lucky, curious boy that had he had been before. That he still was, buried beneath the anger.

And then came the smile, bright and amazed and not caring one lick if he was broadcasting his oversized incisors to the entire world. It was like the sun coming out after months of a particularly persistent smog cloud, blinding and beautiful and…he really needed to stop smiling like that. Daxter was not equipped to handle smiles like that.

“What’d I tell ya? Most scenic bit o’ real estate in the whole city,” he said with a grin as Jak finally stepped from the doorway and padded across the sand. “Just a five minute walk to the beach.”

The two of them joined the Wastelander waiting for them, who waved at them amiably. He seemed genuinely excited to see them, or maybe he was just excited about killing Metal Heads. “Hello, Cherries. Ready to hunt a few Metal Heads?”

“I was _born_ ready,” Daxter boasted confidently, ignoring the disbelieving snort that came from behind him and Sig’s raised eyebrows. Well…never mind. Sig didn’t _have_ eyebrows. He wondered if it had anything to do with the missing eye. “I’m Daxter and this is Jak. He’s with me. Thought I’d do him a favor and show him the ropes.”

He threw a lanky arm around Jak’s shoulders as he said this, unthinking and too happy to care. Things were looking disturbingly good. The sun was shining, the waves were singing, Jak was literally beaming, and that smile contagious.

“Follow me, stick close, and watch my six. It’s gonna be _fun_!”

Maybe Daxter had been wrong. Maybe, for once, he was just worrying too much and everything was going to be fine. It could happen, right?


	10. Chapter 10

Daxter was having fun.

Actual, honest to goodness, fun.

Having _fun_ shooting Metal Heads on the beach with a giant mercenary who wouldn’t stop calling him “cherry” and “chili pepper.”

It shouldn’t have been so surprising. Yes, Daxter tended to be the voice of caution in the dynamic duo, but he knew how to let loose and have a good time when his life wasn’t in danger. And hanging around a guy as skilled and as easygoing as Sig, the young tennager couldn’t help but relax. He’d been terrified at first. Who wouldn’t be when they were tasked with fighting off the monsters that threatened all life as they knew it with nothing but a single Scatter Gun. But, in all honesty, fighting Metal Heads wasn’t all that different from fighting Lurkers, except now Daxter had something a hair more lethal than a thorny stick. It was almost thrilling, being able to take down something three times his size in just a few shots. He could see why Sig saw the appeal, though Daxter didn’t think he would ever pursue such a career for himself. He, unlike some people who would remain unnamed, believed in a little thing called self-preservation. But with things going so well on this mission, it was all too easy for Daxter to let himself be lulled into a false sense of security.

That things _were_ going so well should have been Daxter’s first clue. Well, his first clue had been the sea of trepidation churning in his gut since he had gotten up that morning. But it was so hard to remember why he had been so worried when the sun was shining so brightly in a relatively smog-free sky, and the light was playing so familiarly on the choppy blue waves, and the air smelt like sand and sea salt. After he had taken out his first Metal Head, the Wastelander had grinned down at him and slapped a heavy hand on his shoulder, actually complimenting him, somewhat incredulously, on his shooting skills. And Jak…

A good 99% of Daxter’s anxiety had revolved around Jak, on whether or not he would be able to restrain himself should things start to go south, but honestly it seemed the worst he’d had to worry about was Jak getting bored. And even that wasn’t proving to be an issue. The older teen seemed content to stand back and watch Daxter shoot – seemed to enjoy it, even. All the warm-hearted praise in the world couldn’t quite compare to one of Jak’s proud half smiles, or the sound of his laugh when Daxter used a lull in the fighting to boast obnoxiously. It was just a good thing Daxter couldn’t see Jak’s eyes behind his goggles. To everyone else who saw them, they might have seemed like two empty, black, soulless pits that delved into the depths of oblivion, but Daxter had gotten used to them. They were just as expressive as his old blues had been, if you knew what to look for. And Daxter knew what to look for, knew what he would find if Jak pulled back those goggles.

Daxter really couldn’t afford to have his legs going to jelly mid-battle so, yes, it was a very good thing Jak’s eyes were covered.

And Sig would probably shoot them if he caught wind of Jak’s…problem, so there was that, too…

The flame-haired boy cared very little for what others thought of him…well, no, that was a lie. Daxter cared very much about what others thought of him, and he sort of hated how people assumed he was nothing but a useless nuisance, but he usually didn’t care enough to hold his tongue and try to convince people to like him. The people who mattered liked him, and that was enough for him. He knew that, though Keira was often more annoyed with him than not, she wouldn’t change him for anything. And Jak liked him for who he was, all his numerous and glaring faults included. For all Daxter’s boasting and posturing, there was only one person’s approval that really mattered to him. And that person was sliding clawed fingers through his hair, ruffling the already messy fiery plume into a veritable bird’s nest.

“Where was all of this three years ago when we fought Gol and Maia?” the teen teased, his fangs flashing in a grin before he remembered that they weren’t alone and he had to keep his guard up. Sig wasn’t paying much attention to them, off to the side reloading his modified Peacemaker, but Jak couldn’t afford to relax completely.

“Hey, I pulled my own weight. If you recall, I did quite a number on that Dark Eco monster,” Daxter countered, pushing Jak’s hand out of his hair and trying, unsuccessfully, to tame it somewhat. It had been easier to manage when it was longer, but it had also made him stick out like a sore thumb. Not like it still didn’t, but there was no way he would do something as sinful as dying his beautiful hair.

“I have to admit, you handled yourself pretty well,” Jak said with a smile, but it was not the usual smile that accompanied praise. Not the kind of smile that made you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, no. There was something evil about this smile. “Someone with your skill doesn’t even really need a weapon like this. So you won’t mind if I…borrow it?”

Before Daxter could so much as blink, the Scatter Gun had mysteriously vanished from his hands and Jak was halfway down the beach, laughing into the wind.

“Jaaaak!

The Wastelander watched the two teenagers chase each other up and down the small stretch of beach with a surprisingly fond expression, though neither boy noticed it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen two kids just having a good time. That sort of thing didn’t exist anymore in Haven City, not really. Sig supposed people got pretty excited about the races, but you could only get so excited when you already knew who was going to win. Other than that, life was too hard to make much time for fun. It was actually nice to take a break from Krew’s slimy personality and some of the more unsavory characters he was forced to work, even if he was essentially babysitting the two.

Sig honestly hadn’t been sure what to make of the teenagers when he’d first seen them, and he hadn’t been all that excited about working with them. There was no way he could have anticipated how his day was about to go.

Sig had seen a lot of things in his life. Had seen Metal Heads the size of small buildings, had ventured into nests as big as whole neighborhoods, and had come out alive and relatively unscathed. Most of the time. There was very little that could bother Sig these days. A beach full of nasty Metal Heads all clamoring to rip him to shreds? That was a walk in the park compared to some of the monsters he had tangled with over the years in the Wastelands. Sometimes Sig wondered why Haven City had such a problem with the Metal Heads. If one guy could take down a trophy room’s worth of the beasts in one afternoon, then surely the people around here could fend off the nest if they banded together, right? But Sig had to remind himself that the Metal Heads here weren’t like the Metal Heads he had grown up with. They weren’t loping behemoths that could be bombed from a distance. They were small, cunning, vicious, and seemed to have absolutely no end to their numbers. And most of the people around here were not equipped to fight even the smallest scorpion-like Metal Head, let alone take on the main nest. They were a far cry from Wastelanders.

But Sig had fought all types of Metal Heads, and all types of people as well. He knew how to handle most situations and could trust his instincts with just about anything. Instinct told him not to trust his boss as far as he could throw him (which wasn’t very far). Instinct, and a healthy bit of common sense, told him that he shouldn’t hunt Metal Heads on the beach alone without anyone to watch his back. And his instincts were telling him, no, screaming at him, that the two _kids_ Krew had put in charge of his safety were trouble. And not the questionable sort of trouble that could sometimes turn out to be a thrilling adventure, but just the regular bad sort of trouble that left a bad taste in Sig’s mouth. For one, they stuck out. Krew stuck out. That sleazy guy with the fetish for explosives stuck out. People who liked to sprinkle grief into Sig’s life stuck out. So he had more than a few reservations about the loudmouth with the ketchup and mustard hair and his pasty-skinned shadow.

The two of them had guts, Sig had to admit. The two teenagers had strolled into the Hip Hog like they owned the place, and the Wastelander was surprised Krew had actually humored them rather than having Sig take care of them, but maybe the conniving crime lord had seen potential in them. Krew had a good eye for that sort of thing. Or maybe he just knew more about them than he was letting on, which was far more likely. But attitudes like theirs were just _asking_ for trouble. That mouth of his would cause the flame-headed kid problems sooner or later – it was amazing he’d managed to survive past puberty at all, really – but he wasn’t really the one Sig was worried about. No, he had his eyes on the creepy, pale one. There was just something about the kid that gave Sig the creeps and set his teeth on edge – more so than even the nastiest, foulest Metal Head he had ever had to face, more so than having to stand within fifty feet of Krew during chowtime. The kid was like a faulty Peacemaker – extremely volatile, highly destructive, and ready to go off without a moment’s notice, taking out anything and anyone unlucky enough to get in the way. He was going to have to keep his eye on that one.

It was always nice to be able to get out of the city, though, he couldn’t deny that. Being trapped in the that cramped labyrinth of a city for any length of time made Sig feel claustrophobic, and being stuck with Krew for too long made his trigger finger twitchy. He missed wide open spaces and endless expanses of desert. After so many years stuck in Haven City on this wild goose chase of his, he was starting to think his mission was hopeless. It had been years, now. The poor kid had probably already - .

“Gotcha!” Sig snapped out of his thoughts as two elves came flying out of his peripheral to land in a heap in the sand in front of him. Jak, the pale one, was on the bottom, laughing and hacking up sand as he tried to keep the gun away from his friend. With a sigh, the large Wastelander reached down and easily pried the gun out of their hands. The two teens looked up at him with somewhat guilty expressions as Sig glared down at them with a hand on his hip.

“You do know that this isn’t a toy, right?” he asked not unkindly.

“You hear that, Jak?” the taller of the two taunted as he pushed himself to his feet. “It’s a lethal weapon. Not just _anyone_ can use them, you know. It takes _skill_ and _finesse_.”

“I’m sorry I ever doubted you, Daxter,” the other teen answered with a smirk. The other teen snorted and held out a hand to help his friend up, and was promptly dragged down to land face-first into the sand. Sig rolled his eyes and turned away, plodding further up the beach and huffing warmly at the sound of laughter behind him. Had Sig been like that when he was a teenager? Probably.

“When you two kiddies are done playin’ in the sandbox, we’ve got one more Metal Head to bag,” he threw over his shoulder. It wasn’t too long before the kids were scrambling to catch up with him. He threw the Scatter Gun back to Daxter and chuckled when the boy fumbled not to drop it. It was hard to believe he’d had such a bad feeling about these two when he’d first met them, that he _still_ had that bad feeling.

The trio made their way down the beach with few problems. The two armed elves took out the few amphibians brainless enough to actually attack them while Jak trailed behind, more focused on the scenery around him. All in all, this had been a pretty easy mission, Sig thought. A lot easier than he thought it would be, to be honest. He had come out to the pumping station several times over the years and, though it wasn’t always horribly infested with Metal Heads, it wasn’t usually so quiet either. At first he hadn’t worried too much about it – less Metal Heads should be a _good_ thing – but the longer time went on the more it started to bother Sig. The Metal Heads that did attack them were weak, relatively speaking, and didn’t put up much of a fight, but the Wastelander felt like something else was out there…waiting.

Again, instincts and all that.

Sometimes he really hated when his instincts were right.

He could see the last nasty Metal Head up ahead, standing on a cliff, and was about to kneel down to take better aim when the first wave of Metal Heads sprang from the bushes. Four snarling, hissing Metal Heads, fanned out to surround them and prowled toward them like hungry jagwolves, and one lurking in the back standing on two feet, with a glowing red staff clutched in its claws. So things were finally getting exciting, Sig thought as he raised his gun and took aim at the largest Metal Head in the back. But when he went to fire, his gun wouldn’t respond.

“Dammit!” he cursed vehemently. He hadn’t had a problem with his Peacemaker in six years and it chose _now_ of all times to act up. He turned to Daxter and tried not to wince as the kid stared at the Metal Heads with growing horror. He’d been able to take out two or three with few problems, but five on all on his own? “Take over! Get ‘em while I fix my gun!”

The cloud that Daxter had been floating on all morning abruptly dissolved beneath his feet as he took in the situation. Surrounded by Metal Heads. No Sig to back him up. One of the Metal Heads had a staff that probably did more than just glow in the dark. And was that a hint of yellow Metal Head eyes glinting in the bushes in the cliffs above them. Jak stood behind him, shoulders hunched and hands curled into fists, but thankfully his Dark Eco aura was nowhere to be seen. The only thin sanding between them and certain, painful death was Daxter and his budding shooting skills, assuming he didn’t pass out from the wave of terror that was slowly trying to take over. He _knew_ it! He just _knew_ something was going to go horribly wrong! Screw trying to weasel information out of Krew; they should have just stayed home or…or done something safe like blowing up the Palace or something!

“You got this, Daxter,” Jak muttered behind him, though most of his attention seemed to be on holding himself in check. Daxter let out a sound that might have been a whine of terror, or something similar, and then the closest Metal Head was attacking. It leapt forward, jaws open wide and fetid drool flying, and Daxter pulled the trigger more out of reflex than anything. The monster jerked back with a bark of pain, but the concussive force wasn’t enough to kill it, and now its friends were angry.

He didn’t have time to think though, thankfully. If he had, he probably would have psyched himself out and been completely useless. But the Metal Heads attacked again, two this time, and Daxter shot without thinking. He didn’t need to think. He just needed to point and shoot and the Metal Heads growled in pain and backed off before charging again, but they never managed to come farther than the Scatter Gun’s range. When he heard Sig cursing behind him, he turned and shot at those Metal Heads, too.

This wasn’t so bad…three Metal Heads down, and even the big one wasn’t so tough after a few shots in the face. Daxter could handle this.

And then came the second wave of Metal Heads – the eyes in the bushes above that Daxter had carelessly forgotten about.

With a high-pitched roar, seven more quadrupedal Metal Heads leapt from the cliffs above and landed among them, splitting them up. There were four ravenous beasts between him and his two comrades and, while Sig was picking up his gun and looked like he might be back in action, Jak wasn’t looking too hot. His back was hunched and his claws were spread in a battle stance Daxter had become quite familiar with, but he still seemed to be holding himself back. He had more restraint than Daxter had given him credit for, but the younger teen wasn’t sure how much longer that would last. And he wasn’t sure how long he could fend off these Metal Heads when he was running low on ammo. But he forced himself to concentrate on the chaos around him, on aiming the gun and pulling the trigger, and not on the worry eating at the back of his mind.

And maybe he had focused too much on the battle, if such a thing were possible. He certainly hadn’t noticed the Metal Head that sneaked up behind him, amber eyes bright and glowing with malice. He hadn’t noticed, but Jak had. Since they had first stepped onto the beach he had been on edge. He knew, _knew_ , Daxter could take care of himself, but he couldn’t help but worry. Daxter had never enjoyed combat like Jak had, had never bothered to join in when he trained on Geyser Rock until the trouble had started with Gol and Maia. It was strange to see him enjoying himself fighing on the beach now – strange, but not a bad thing. Watching Daxter train in a shooting range was a far cry from watching Daxter fight off Metal Heads. As focused as Daxter had been on getting a good score on the gun course, it was something entirely different when your life was on the line. He wasn’t the fastest shooter and sometimes he fumbled if something surprised him, but he was a good shot and he didn’t panic. And it was something new, seeing Daxter fight like this. Seeing him do the defending. Seeing him grin triumphantly, hair disheveled and eyes strangely wild. Jak wondered if that’s how he looked whenever he fought something, but quickly dismissed the thought. The only times he had actually fought something, something alive that could fight back, he had been fueled by Dark Eco. He didn’t want to think about how he must look post-battle, covered in gore and grinning like a monster out of a nightmare.

It had been so difficult to hold himself back. To not rush forward and slide his claws through the flesh of the creatures that dared tried to hurt Daxter. But he had restrained himself because he had to. Because he couldn’t let Sig know that a poorly disguised monster was tagging along. Because he couldn’t let Daxter go on his own while he waiting for him back at the house – he’d go insane. So he followed behind and he focused not on how close the Metal Heads’ claws had come to rending Daxter’s flesh, and instead on the way his friend smiled when he realized that he had taken down Metal Heads by himself. Focused on how good it felt to be able to joke with Daxter and fool around with him almost like he had been able to back home. Focused on the sound of his laugh and the way his eyes narrowed when he took aim with the Scatter Gun. So he saw when the Metal Head came up behind Daxter, fangs dripping and tail whipping, but he wasn’t fast enough to do anything about it. There seemed to be miles between him and Daxter, and at least half a dozen Metal Heads, and he doubted his friend could hear his yelled warning over the sound of guns firing and beasts snarling.

Daxter didn’t make a sound when he was hit, when vicious claws tore through his side. He didn’t scream, or gasp, or shout. He didn’t even grimace in pain. Instead there was a look of shock there, a shock so profound it had stolen his voice. Time seemed to slow for Jak as Daxter fell to his knees, a hand flying to his bloodied side. Wide, panicked blue eyes glanced behind him, took in the sight of the Metal Head looming over him, bloodied claws raised for another attack, and the fragile control Jak had been clinging to snapped. He could feel the Dark eco singing underneath his skin, urging him to _killtearrendbreak_ , and, for once, he didn’t feel an ounce of regret for giving in.

When Sig heard the howl – or the roar, or the shriek, or whatever the hell it was – he had been expecting another Metal Head. A particularly nasty one, from the sound of it. Sure, he had never actually heard a Metal Head make a sound like that before, but just because he was an experienced Wastelander didn’t make him some sort of Metal Head expert. He bashed in the skull of the Metal Head in front of him and spun around to face this new threat, and turned to face a bloodbath.

Though Sig made a living out of killing Metal Heads, and occasionally people depending heavily on the circumstances, he never had liked gore. It was messy, and sticky, and disgusting, and smelled. So he preferred to shoot his targets with the Peacemaker, which left plenty of bodies but very little mess. The Marauders preferred to use scimitars, to cause their enemies to suffer before they eventually died, but Sig felt that even the cruelest Marauder would balk at this sight.

Daxter was on his knees in the sand, clutching at his side and pale as a ghost. Blood oozed from between his fingers to paint the sand below him. Above him stood Jak, the pale adolescent, arms covered in blood from the elbows down and the rest of him splattered like some artist’s canvas. A Metal Head thrashed on the sand beneath him, its neck under Jak’s boot as the teen tugged at one of its arms. With a sickening pop, the arm dislocated and, with another sharp tug, it came straight off.

Like Krew ripping the leg off a roast bird.

The other Metal Heads paused, and then took a step back. And then another. They glanced warily at each other. Their injured brother squealed in agony, his thrashing kicking up sand and his black blood staining the earth. The pale teen dropped the lifeless arm onto the sand beneath him and crushed the throat of the pathetic creature under his boot, his teeth bared into a snarl more vicious and unhinged than anything Sig had ever seen. But that wasn’t what made the Wastelander’s skin crawl, though the sight of a young man killing something so brutally certainly was disturbing. Dark Eco crackled along the young man’s arms, along the curve of his back, slithered around his feet and lanced out to touch the sand. It crackled around him like an aura of purple lightning, like a small and lethal storm, like the discharge of a Peacemaker.

For the first time in years, Sig did not know what to do. All the experience in the world could not have prepared him for a situation like this. Attack, wait, or flee? Each decision had its pros and cons. Before he could decide, the Metal Heads let out a vicious howl before charging the pale teen, hoping to overtake him if they attacked as one.

The pale demon smiled, and all hell broke loose.

Sig had never really spent much time thinking about Metal Heads as living, breathing creatures. His subconscious had always sort of brushed over the fact that they were, in fact, living and breathing creatures and had focused instead on seemingly more important things, like the fact that they were slowly destroying the world and needed to be taken care of as expediently as possible. He had heard Metal Heads die before. Of course he had. Sig had been killing Metal Heads all his life; it was as much a part of him as his penchant for calling people different kinds of food. But being killed by a Peacemaker was a swift affair and, even when Sig had had to resort to other methods of killing the beasts, he had always tried to be quick. He had certainly never heard a Metal Head shriek in agony before – he hadn’t known they could. He hadn’t seen a Metal Head try to _flee in terror_ only to be dragged to its death by its tail. The Wastelander watched the scene in front of him in honest horror, and actually felt bad for the creatures he had been hunting his entire life – if only a little bit. But he couldn’t look away. It was like a train wreck, horrifying and gruesome and traumatizing and fascinating.

He couldn’t leave even if he wanted to. Daxter lay passed out in the sand, probably from blood loss. Sig hadn’t had to see the wound to know it was bad. Metal Heads didn’t waste time torturing their victims. They took them out quickly and violently, and the skinny teen was lucky to be alive. He couldn’t just leave the kid there lying on the beach to bleed out, or at the mercy of the demon howling bloodlust above him. Assuming the kid wasn’t dead already. If the Metal Head hadn’t killed him, the Dark Eco lancing across his skin might have finished the job.

The last Metal Head died with a pathetic whimper, and the pale teen was left standing in a circle of broken corpses. Jak, the demon, whatever he was, finally turned toward the unconscious teen lying in the sand and managed to take a single step before a shot rang through the air and the sand in front of him hissed and smoldered. It hadn’t been a shot from the Peacemaker, but from the Blaster Gun like modification Sig had attached to it. A warning shot. The teen turned to look at Sig slowly, his posture that of a predator merely waiting for the most opportune moment to strike. There was no sign of the young elf who had laughed warmly as he chased his friend down the beach. It was almost as if he had never been there at all. All that remained was blood in the sand and the crackle of Dark Eco.


	11. Chapter 11

Sig had done a lot of questionable things in his life, both as a Wastelander and as Krew’s hired gun. He had done things he wasn’t exactly proud of, though he wouldn’t necessarily say he had any regrets. However, just because he was a Wastelander and a mercenary did not mean that he didn’t have any morals. He had quite a few of them, in fact. And shooting children was about as against his morals as Sig could possibly get.

The creature baring its teeth at him from across the blood-soaked sand didn’t look like a kid. Oh, it was _shaped_ like one, if you ignored the claws and the fangs. But the way it held itself, its muscles coiled and ready to lash out and its claws extended threateningly, fangs gleaming in the strange purple glow of it crackling Eco – that was all lethal, pissed-off predator waiting to strike. The Wastelander wished he could shove up those goggles and see what was going on in that silver-haired head, know what exactly he was dealing with. Sig tried to find any sign of ‘Jak’ in the lines of that creature’s body, but found none. Three well-aimed shots with his Blaster mod could bring the thing down, he thought, and yet he hesitated. It wasn’t that he was afraid, or that he didn’t think he could get the shots off fast enough. One wrong move and there would be one more dead body on the beach, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be Sig’s. But that was just the thing – the creature _wasn’t_ moving…at least, not moving like it was about to attack. It shifted subtlety in the sand, maneuvering until it stood firmly between Sig and the unconscious, bleeding lump face-first in the sand.

So maybe the demon wasn’t so demonic after all, if it was trying to protect the kid. As much as that realization relieved Sig, it would probably do more harm than good. To Sig’s understanding, Dark Eco was the most volatile and lethal substance on the face of the planet, and yet Daxter’s friend didn’t seem to realize that zapping him with dozens of little lightning strikes of Dark Eco might not exactly be the healthiest thing right about now. And if Sig didn’t do something to stop the bleeding, he would have a very dead teenager and a very angry Dark Eco… _something_ on his hands, and that was not something he wanted to deal with. Honestly, Krew didn’t pay him enough.

“Look, things don’t need to get any uglier than they already are,” Sig said, attempting to sound placating while keeping his massive Peacemaker trained on the spot right between Jak’s goggled eyes. He could be diplomatic when he wanted to be, but there was no way he was letting his guard down near a creature that had managed to take down a pack of Metal Heads by ripping them apart limb from limb with its bare hands. “Just…step away from the kid and let me -.”

Whatever else he planned to say was drowned out by growl that could have made a Metalsaur turn around and run with its stubby tail between its legs. The Dark Eco surged like a wall of snapping, lashing tongues of death. Sig would have liked to say he wasn’t at all intimidated, but that wouldn’t be the whole truth. He did, however, have more important concerns.

“You’re friend’s dying. Might even be dead already,” which was harsh, very harsh, but it seemed to do the trick. It was like somebody had flipped a switch. One minute there was a snarling, glowing, demon from hell glaring at him from amidst a circle of mangled corpses, and the next there was just an ordinary, if panicked, teenager.

And Jak was panicking. Which was a new and horrible feeling that he really didn’t like and he couldn’t understand why Daxter seemed to like panicking so much because, really, he felt like he was going to be sick.

Jak hadn’t felt fear like this in years. Even on the darkest days trapped in that horrible prison he hadn’t felt fear like this. Anger, yes. So much anger, and dread because he knew that every day he’d have to face whatever new horror Erol had concocted in that twisted, sadistic mind of his. But Jak had never feared for his own life. Locked away in his cell, he had worried about Samos and Keira, but mostly about Daxter. He had been terrified of the thought of Daxter out there somewhere, alone, in this strange cruel world that didn’t make any sense. Terrified, later, of the thought of Erol torturing his best friend in the same ways he went through every day. But even that fear hadn’t compared to the raw panic that had filled him that day in the spider caves. He couldn’t remember much from that day. Back then, it had almost been like Jak and the bloodlust were two separate entities, and he’d tended to forget whatever he’d done after it faded. But he could remember the way his stomach had leapt into his throat when Daxter had collapsed, the way his heart had stopped when Daxter hadn’t woken up no matter what he’d tried. It had been one thing to hear Erol talk about all the things he had done to Daxter, but another thing entirely to stare down at his friend’s seemingly lifeless body and not be able to do _anything_.

It was so much worse this time. Jak ignored the instincts screaming at him that there was still a gun pointed directly at him, a threat that needed to be eliminated, and fell to his knees in the sand next to the limp body of his friend. Daxter was disturbingly cold, his skin clammy and so pale as to almost be translucent. That he was still breathing was hardly the relief it should have been when his breaths were so faint and far too quick. Jak didn’t know the first thing about first aid or healing. Injuries had never been a real problem back home where Green Eco had been nearly as abundant as the air itself, and where anything serious could have been taken care of with a wave of Samos’ wizened hands. Back at the prison, Jak had never had to worry about dying exactly, not until the end. The Baron had wanted to keep him alive to attempt to torture his so-called secrets out of him, so they’d always been careful to never go too far. It had helped in a way that he was chock full of Dark Eco; it meant he was a bit sturdier than the average elf. But none of that helped now when Daxter’s life was literally flowing out of him, barely slowed by Jak’s shaking hands and staining the sand an ugly, dark red.

A sound behind him, the soft crunch of a booted foot moving through the sand, literally had his hackles rising and his Eco snapping in warning. He glared viciously at the mercenary over his shoulder, but the only emotion he saw in that single green eye was worry.

“I’ve got a health pack I can use on ‘im; it’s not too late,” Sig explained, eyeing the pale teen warily. “But I can’t exactly heal him from all the way over here, if you catch my drift.”

The Wastelander finally lowered his gun, reached into one of the pouches dangling from his waist, and pulled out a small, grey, metal cube. The object pulsed with a green energy all too familiar to Jak. Green Eco, the energy of life and renewal. There was hope, held not ten feet away in that mercenary’s hand. Any sane individual would step aside now and let the older elf help, let him heal the downed teenager before it was too late. But Jak was self-aware enough to know he wasn’t entirely sane. His mind was still hazy with the rush of battle, the blinding rage that someone had dared to attack _his_ Daxter, and he wasn’t thinking very clearly. He didn’t want to let the other elf anywhere _near_ Daxter, and the darker part of his mind told him he didn’t have to. How easy it would be to take the other elf by surprise now when his guard was down. Without that gun to protect him he was barely a threat; killing him would be effortless. And then the last threat would be gone and Jak would be able to help Daxter himself.

The rest of his mind, the slightly saner parts anyway, all balked at the thought of killing Sig just because he _could_. Sig wasn’t some Lurker or Metal Head out to destroy the world, or even some Krimzon Guard glaring at him from behind a metal faceplate. Jak couldn’t say he knew him well, but he seemed like a good guy – the nicest of the few people he had met in Haven City. Yes, he had shot at Jak but he hadn’t been aiming _at_ him, or Jak was fairly certain he’d already be dead right now. Sig was worried about Daxter too and he didn’t know that Jak would rather throw himself down the volcanic crater’s lava tube without one of Keira’s heat shields than willingly hurt his best friend. Despite this, he still didn’t want to let the other elf any closer. He couldn’t trust the Wastelander, and entrusting him with Daxter’s life was too much…

“…Let me,” was all he could manage to ground out, but it seemed like the other elf understood him.

“No can do. Who knows what kind of messed up things can happen when you mix two Ecos together,” Sig commented with a leery frown, eyeing Jak’s crackling Eco aura warily.

Jak knew exactly what happened when you mixed two Ecos together. Or at least he knew what happened when Dark Eco mixed with Green Eco. He could remember well the strange, horrible, amorphous monster he and Daxter had fought on top of Gol and Maia’s citadel. No, that wasn’t something he could risk…Even though there only seemed to be a small amount of Eco in Sig’s health pack, anything could happen. Maybe it would mix with Jak’s Eco and make a smaller if no less vicious version of the monster he had fought years ago. Or maybe the reaction wouldn’t happen until the Green Eco was already inside of Daxter, mending his wounds, and then…

No.

Jak threw himself away from Daxter with a ragged snarl, a clawed hand dragging over his face and tearing through his hair. Every second that he hesitated brought Daxter closer one step closer to an early death. He had already thought he’d lost his best friend once. He couldn’t go through that again. The rage and the guilt and the emptiness. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t let Daxter die because he couldn’t control his bloodlust and let someone _help_.

As soon as he, and his small storm of Dark Eco, were safely out of the way, Sig shot forward and held up the health pack. Jak watched with narrowed, ink black eyes as familiar Green Eco began to surround Daxter’s body and sink beneath his skin. It wasn’t much, but when the green glow had faded his skin had already regained some color and his breathing had slowed, though it remained shallow. The gaping wound in his side, four long claw marks that would most likely leave nasty scars if not healed with more Eco, had closed somewhat. Knowing Daxter, he would probably prefer to keep the scars just so that he could brag about them to anyone who would listen. He would make up wild tales about how he had taken on fifty Metal Heads single-handedly and fought off the final one with his bare hands, receiving the scars in the process. He would make Jak out to be some sort of damsel in distress he’d had to rescue. That thought, and the realization that now he would be _alive_ to tell such tales, had Jak grinning, if brittley.

“As good as new, or at least he’s not knockin’ on Death’s door,” Sig said warmly, his voice heavy with relief and mood abruptly changed now that the crisis was averted and his life wasn’t being threatened. “He’s still standing on Death’s porch, however. Those gaping holes in his side are an infection waiting to happen, and I don’t wanna know what kind of Metal Head germs might be swimmin’ around in there. I’d head back and get my hands on some more health packs, if I were you.”

“I…thanks,” now that Daxter was safe, for now, he felt like some of the rage that had been clouding his mind was clearing somewhat. The big elf just smiled at him enigmatically with a raised brow, all earlier hostility mysteriously gone.

“Don’t mention it. Really, don’t. Wouldn’t be good for my reputation,” the Wastelander said, completely serious. “And maybe I won’t mention that I ran into the Dark Eco kid running around Haven City.”

At Jak’s sharp glance, the big elf actually chuckled. “Oh yea, I’ve heard all about you. Took me a second to remember, though. The KG are paying a hefty sum for whoever can bring you in, dead or alive. Lucky for you I only hunt Metal Heads.”

“I almost killed you, and you’re not even tempted to turn me in? What’s the catch?” the pale teen asked curiously, eyeing the other suspiciously.

The Wastelander actually threw his head back and laughed. “Don’t get cocky, chili pepper. You might’ve gotten one hit in before I blew you away. _Maybe_. But really, do I _look_ the type to cooperate with the Krimzon Guard?”

Jak snorted as he knelt down to pick Daxter up. Despite the fact the teen was taller than him now, and slightly less scrawny than Jak remembered, he didn’t seem to weigh all that much. It would probably be easier to throw him over his shoulder, but with Daxter’s injuries that wasn’t an option. He’d have to carry him bridal style. He wasn’t sure if Daxter would have hated that or loved it. The younger elf loved praise and attention and even being fussed over, but he hated feeling as though he were weak. If he were awake, he’d be either be soaking up the attention in the most obnoxious way possible or he’d be trying his hardest to deafen Jak with all his huffing and complaining. The pale teen actually would have preferred the whining to this silence, to the raspy sound of Daxter’s shallow breathing. The health pack had stopped him from dying there on the beach but Sig was right, he needed more help. Even if he did manage to find another health pack, he wouldn’t risk trying to heal Daxter himself and Jak didn’t exactly have a whole lot of people he could go to for help. Definitely not Krew. “I don’t know…your boss is such an upstanding citizen and all.”

“And I’m the Baron of Haven City,” the Wastelander murmured under his breath. “Well, looks like the last one ran while he could. I’m gonna clean the Peacemaker and pick up the trophies. Your friend didn’t do half bad, for a rookie. Up until he got stabbed in the back, at least.”

“I’ll let him know.” He tried to ignore the fact that he could still feel Sig’s single eye watching them closely long after the Wastelander was out of sight. The bigger elf probably had a lot of questions, and Jak probably owed him some answers at some point, but he was glad the mercenary had kept them to himself. He didn’t know if he could trust Sig, but things seemed to be pointing toward a resounding ‘yes’ and he didn’t have time to worry about it now. He _wanted_ to be able to trust Sig, though. He seemed like a good guy – a rare thing in Haven City.

The walk back to Haven City was agonizingly slow, but at least it was uneventful. If there were still any Metal Heads left, they were making themselves scarce, and the wildlife was thankfully smart enough to stay away from an adversary covered in enough blood to fill a tub. Jak didn’t have much hope that a trudge halfway across Haven City would be equally uneventful. Torn was the only other person Jak thought they might be able to trust. The tattooed elf had accepted Jak’s ‘condition’ easily enough, and they were working for him, so he should be willing to help. He just didn’t know how the Krimzon Guards would respond to a blood-soaked teenager walking around with comatose, equally bloody body. It was entirely possible that the KG would just ignore it, like they tended to ignore all crime that didn’t directly affect them in some way, and there was every possibility that the KG would pick this particular day to actually do their duty and try to bring Jak in. Or just shoot him on sight. He didn’t have a lot of options and he honestly didn’t know how much time he had. After all this was over with he was going to have to find some way to learn about wounds and all that encompassed, because he couldn’t panic every time Daxter got injured.

“So nice to be pampered every once in a while. You should carry me around more often, Jak,” the aforementioned comatose body commented cheerfully, and Jak almost dropped the fiery-haired elf in the muck of the water slums in shock.

“Daxter!”

“The one and only!” Daxter’s smile was weak but completely genuine and another sign that he was _alive_. “I can walk, though, ya know. I got two legs, same as you.”

To his credit, Daxter only wobbled drunkenly for a moment before he managed to right himself without help. He was hunched awkwardly to one side, as if he thought leaning to his left would somehow close the wounds more and make them stop hurting, but at least he could stand on his own two feet. A weight Jak hadn’t really realized still haunted him slid off of his shoulders as Daxter began to complain – a sure sign that he would make it, or at least last long enough to find another health pack.

“ _Man_ , that stung! _Please_ tell me I didn’t faint after one pathetic hit? We’ll leave that part out when we tell Keira about it,” Daxter hissed as he glanced down at his side, eyes widening a bit as he took in the wound. Jak didn’t think Daxter had ever really been injured before, that he could remember. Jak had broken bones before, had dislocated limbs and had had a fair number of scars healed by the resident Green Eco Sage, but he had always tried to make sure Daxter had never gotten hurt. The first time he could remember Daxter being hurt was that incident in the spider caves, and Jak had been so unprepared for it (and so mad on Dark Eco) that he had almost mauled Samos before he could heal him. “We, um…yea, we should do something about that, huh? Wow. Is that all _my_ blood? That’s… a lot of blood. That’s not all mine, is it?”

“There’s some Metal Head blood in there, too, if that makes you feel any better,” Jak informed him helpfully, smirking at the face Daxter made.

“Oh, yeuch! This is just sick. If I get rabies I’m blaming it on you,” the pale teen, and pale as in lost a lot of blood and not pale as in full of Dark Eco, placed a trembling hand to his side and started shuffling down the pier, Jak hovering within catching distance like a mother Flut-Flut. “I got a health pack back at the house for, uh…just such emergencies. Figures I wouldn’t need it ‘til I’m saddled with you again.”

Making it to the house with a conscious Daxter was a lot easier, and a lot less suspicious, than trying to carry him through the entirety of the slums. A couple of Krimzon Guards still glared at them as they passed, probably thinking they were no-good ruffians who had gotten into some sort of street fight, but it was better than trying to avoid being arrested. Once they got safely inside, Daxter collapsed as slowly and delicately as physically possible onto the cot while Jak searched for the health pack. It didn’t take him long to find it though, and once Daxter had used the Green Eco on himself he was as right as rain. Or, at least he was no longer on Death’s front porch. It hadn’t been enough Eco to heal him completely but, by the way Daxter poked and prodded at his new scars with a slightly disturbing grin on his face, Jak didn’t think he minded all that much.

“These ain’t half bad. Chicks dig scars, y’know,” he commented lightly, as if the fact that he had nearly been ripped in half didn’t faze him at all. Then again, he hadn’t seen how bad off he’d been. He hadn’t seen the growing puddle of blood or heard those weak, raspy breaths. “Those Metal Heads owe me a new shirt, though. Clothes ain’t exactly cheap…”

“It might be a little difficult for them to pay you back,” Jak said as he sat on the edge of the cot. There wasn’t exactly anywhere else to sit, and he was tired. He had had more than enough excitement for one day, which was saying something, and the adrenaline that had been keeping him upright was draining fast. He pushed his goggles back and out of the way and let the red cowl fall to the floor, glad to be able to stop hiding at least for a little while.

“So, uh…how did Sig take the whole glowy, fanged, Dark Eco thing?” Daxter asked cagily, studiously examining the fingernails of one hand.

“People around here don’t spook as easily as the people back home, I’ll give them that,” Jak admitted, remembering the way various villagers had reacted to seeing him for the first time. He still remembered the day the bird lady had mistaken him for a Horned Slaty-Breasted Long-Eared Screamer.

“ _Some_ people,” Daxter corrected as he rolled onto his back and tucked his arms under his head. “ _Normal_ people would have run away screaming, no offense. But we just seem to be attracting all the crazy people in Haven City, like some sort o’ magnet. I still don’t know if I should find being called a cherry offensive or not.”

“You didn’t run away screaming, either. What does that make you?”

“Me? I’m the craziest of the bunch. It was the clincher on my application for dashingly handsome best friend,” Daxter said with a shrug and an easy grin. Not even a full hour ago, Jak had almost been convinced he’d never see that grin again.

“I’m glad you’re okay, Daxter…” He hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but it wasn’t as if he regretted it or anything. It was the truth. He didn’t know what he would have done if Daxter had died today, if he had let Daxter die. There would be no one to track down for revenge, nothing to keep him focused. He was already frayed, and he would just fall apart without Daxter there to keep him together, to calm him down when he was too far gone and bring him back from the edge. But more than that, more important than that, Jak would just miss Daxter. It was as simple as that. He didn’t want to imagine a world without Daxter’s habit of complaining about just about everything, the way he bragged about even the smallest thing and his sometimes rather acerbic insults, the way he stuck by Jak no matter what crazy and dangerous thing he wanted to do and tried his hardest to be brave even when he would often much rather turn away and run, and the way he smiled genuinely like he was trying not to right now when someone said something nice about him that he wasn’t expecting. He didn’t have to imagine a world without Daxter. He had been in one for a little over a year, and he refused to go through that again.

Daxter actually seemed speechless for a second, and Jak wondered if he’d accidentally said all of that out loud as well, but after a moment he huffed slightly and glanced away with a smirk. “Of course I’m okay! Was there ever any _doubt_?” Before Jak could so much as open his mouth, Daxter quickly held up a finger and leveled him with a glare. “On second thought, don’t answer that.”

_Something_ must have shown in Jak’s expression, however, if the way his friend was suddenly frowning suspiciously at him was any indication. “Whaaaat?”

“You almost died today, Dax.”

Daxter paled, his eyes going wide before he tried to hide his surprise. Maybe he hadn’t realized how close he’d come to dying. He hadn’t been awake when Sig had more or less told Jak that the young elf would die if he didn’t step aside. He hadn’t woken up until he’d already been back in Haven City, partially healed, and maybe he thought that was as bad as it had been. Well, Jak didn’t need to describe the gory details for him. “Yea, well...now ya know how _I_ feel every time you decide to do something stupid! Not exactly _fun_ , is it?!”

No, it wasn’t, but Jak had never been that close to dying before. He didn’t have to say a word. After over fifteen years, Daxter could read his expressions and body language better than Jak could express himself with words. It was easier that way anyway, rather than trying to put things like this into words, especially when Jak didn’t even know how to explain all emotions he had struggled through today. The fear and the anger and the hope and the relief. Daxter understood, though. He somehow always did. The heavy sigh and roll of the eyes that followed were needlessly overdramatic, but couldn’t hide the way his dark blue eyes softened seemingly against his will.

“Yea, yea, I know. But if you expect me to sit back and let you do all the fighting, you’ve got another thing coming!”

Jak merely hummed in response as he collapsed onto his empty space on the cot by the window and buried his face in the sheets. He didn’t care that it was barely past midday. Let Sig be the one to report to Krew and let them know the mission had been, more or less, successful. Just so long as the creep remembered to pay them, preferably with information so that they could actually try to get something useful accomplished. He didn’t even care that he was probably getting blood all over the sheets; Daxter wasn’t exactly spotless himself and he could complain all he liked, later. Much later.

“I…thanks, Jak. Y’know for…well. For savin’ my tail.”

He would have mentioned that he hadn’t really done much, in that regard. Sure, he supposed he had ripped the Metal Heads to shreds before it could do any more damage, but it had been Sig who had healed Daxter. If he hadn’t been there, there wouldn’t have been anything Jak could do to save Daxter. He would have mentioned all that, but he was already sound asleep. And for once, strangely enough, there weren’t any corpses in his sleep.


	12. Chapter 12

The sun had settled well below the horizon when Jak abruptly snapped awake. Besides the gentle crackling of Dark Eco, the glare of passing Zoomers offered the only other source of light. The teen glared suspiciously around the room, but nothing seemed amiss. The floor was half covered with belts and buckles, rags that might’ve been shirts once upon a time, tattered newspaper clippings, and bits of general trash that a teenager might claim made the place seemed ‘lived in.’ Anyone else, particularly ornery Green Eco Sages, would call it what it was – a hiphog sty. Really it was no worse than their room back home, though this place would never feel like home. When nothing nefarious jumped out of the shadows, Jak rolled onto his back and settled back onto the scratchy sheets with a sigh. Whatever it had been that had woken him up, it would be impossible for him to go back to sleep now. Something nagged at the back of his mind and set his nerves on edge, and it would bother him for the rest of the night.

Another Zoomer flew past the shoddily covered window and the glare of its headlights caused the shadows in the room to writhe and twist. The sight sent an unconscious shiver down Jak’s spine. The pale teen had never been afraid of the dark. He had been wary of the things that might lurk _in_ the darkness, but that unknown had never really bothered him like it had Daxter. And Jak still wouldn’t say that he was afraid of the dark, not really. But for two long years his life had been nothing but darkness; the dimness of the prison cell and the lurching shadows that meant Krimzon Guards were coming. Maybe it would be different if this city didn’t just feel like a larger version of the prison he had only recently escaped. But the massive wall that surrounded it served to keep the people in as much as it kept the Metal Heads out. The Krimzon Guard didn’t care whether they tortured a prisoner or fellow citizen; they just had to show more discretion out on the streets. People couldn’t even go where they wanted in the city without permission in the form of security passes.

“ _We are all his prisoners…”_

Nothing about Haven City made any sense to Jak. People like Baron Praxis and Erol hadn’t existed back home. The blatant cruelty of the Guards, the corruption of seemingly anyone with power, the apathy of the rest of the citizens…Gol and Maia had been the only evil Jak had ever known, and Samos had always attributed their madness to exposure to Dark Eco. Despite the Baron’s obsession with the volatile substance, that wasn’t the problem here. None of them, not Praxis or Erol or any of the Guards, showed any signs of being effected by Dark Eco. No pale, greying skin or sickly, yellow eyes or strange growths. Their malice was entirely their own.

It was disturbing to think that people could be so willfully cruel to each other. And it made Jak think more and more about the Dark Eco coursing through his own veins. Jak was the one with the claws and the horns, the fangs and the seemingly insatiable thirst for blood that always simmered just beneath the surface. And yet, he would argue that Erol and Praxis and the corrupt Krimzon Guards were the bigger monsters. The people of Haven City depended on them, trusted them – willingly or not – to protect them from the Metal Heads clamoring at the city walls. To protect them from any threat. And yet every day they betrayed their own city, betrayed and abused the people they were supposed to protect, for…what? Their own amusement? To further their own selfish needs?

Perhaps Jak wasn’t the best judge of character these days. How could he be when he had so much blood on his hands? When he had practically bathed in the blood of his fellow elves and hadn’t felt so much as a shred of remorse – had enjoyed it, even? But he could never, ever see himself willingly betraying the people who depended on him, who trusted him and put their faith in him. He hadn’t forgotten about Samos and Keira. He _would_ find them and get them all home, somehow. And Daxter…

Beside him, the gangly elf snuffled in his sleep and flopped away from the shifting light leaking in through the window. Sound asleep despite the fact that he was lying not a foot away from a bloodthirsty monster who was still covered in thick splashes of dried Metal Head blood. Just thinking about what had happened that afternoon, about what had _nearly_ happened, tore at Jak’s already frayed nerves and caused the electric tendrils of Dark Eco arcing off of his skin to crackle menacingly for a moment. He could see the dark red blood flying through the air, the wide-eyed look of shock on Daxter’s face as he collapsed into the sand…the paleness of his skin, how cold he was. Jak still couldn’t believe how close he’d come to losing his best friend, right in front of him. On minute he had been fine, but the next…

How was he supposed to keep Daxter safe? As long as he was within five feet of Jak, he would always be in danger, from Krimzon Guards or _some_ other threat. But Daxter would never agree to let Jak go off on his own, and, no matter how dangerous Jak knew the road ahead was, he didn’t want him to. They were a team, the ‘dynamic duo’ as Daxter liked to call them. They always had been. Daxter had come a long way from the clumsy teen wielding nothing but a thorn-covered stick, but there was a still lot that he needed to work on if he planned on fighting Krimzon Guards and Metal Heads. It didn’t matter how good Daxter’s aim with a gun was if he didn’t stay aware of his surroundings. He wouldn’t always have someone there to watch his back. Maybe some sparring…

Jak froze as a strange but not unfamiliar sound reached his ears. Even his Eco stopped for a second, and the room seemed ominously dark without it. It wasn’t the sound itself that had set him off, but the fact that he had been able to _hear_ it. That he had been able to hear the clack of a Krimzon Guard cocking their rifle - over the hum of flying Zoomers, the stomp of booted feet along the pier, the murmuring of the never-sleeping citizens of Haven City, the crackle of a Guard’s voice over a radio, the gentle lapping of the polluted water against the wooden and metal poles below them – so loud it sounded as if the Guard doing it had been standing right next to him. It made him realize what had woken him in the first place. He _couldn’t_ hear the stomping of booted feet on the pier, or the murmuring of the crowded streets, or the Krimzon Guards talking to each other on their radios. And though he could still hear the hum of the Zoomers, the shadows along the walls had stopped shifting.

“Dax. Daxter, get up!” the silver-haired teen whispered roughly, shaking the elf beside him none too gently. But even if Daxter had changed quite a bit, he was still _Daxter_ and waking him up had often been like pulling teeth.

True to form, the fiery-haired teen merely grumbled irritably before burying himself further under the tattered linen sheet. But every disturbingly silent second that passed caused the feeling of dread in Jak’s stomach to grow, and they didn’t have time for this. Something was wrong.

The silver-haired teen almost couldn’t prevent a smirk at the sense of déjà vu that went through him as he ran a pitch black claw from the nape of Daxter’s neck down his spine, a thin arc of Dark Eco trailing behind. Two years ago it had been enough to send his young friend flailing over the side of the bed as if he had been electrocuted, and this time was no different. Daxter went tumbling to the floor with a squawk that made Jak wince, but it had worked - and better than he thought. Instead of lying on the floor in a tangled heap, Daxter had sprung back to his feet, the little dagger he kept shoved under his pillow held tightly as he looked wildly around the room. It didn’t take him long to realize what had happened and who had woken him up, and he was just opening his mouth to let loose a tirade that probably would have been legendary when the front door suddenly slammed open to welcome in a volley of gun blasts.

The two teens both leapt out of the way at the same time, Daxter landing awkwardly on his back and scrambling out of the line of sight of the army of guns that seemed to be fighting for room in the open doorway while Jak rolled and landed with a little more grace on the far side of the room. The bed they had just been laying on was reduced to a pile of splintered, smoldering wood – tinder for the newly made fire already starting to chew at the newspaper clippings and tattered rags on the floor.

The night that had been so still and silent before suddenly filled with noise and movement. The snap and crackle of the flames starting to spread, dark and familiar shapes running back and forth just beyond the door, the gruff voices of Krimzon Guards shouting over their radios. The Krimzon Guard had finally found them, and Jak was only surprised it had taken them this long. For a second he wondered if this wasn’t another one of his dreams, but heat of the burgeoning flames was real. The sting from the dozens of cuts caused by the splintering wood was real. And when Jak glanced cross the room and locked gazes with wide, blue eyes, the fear he saw there was very real. So was the line of blood that ran down his younger friend’s cheek from a shallow cut right under his left eye. Such a small, insignificant thing. But that small cut could have been a dozen gaping bullet holes, if Daxter had been any slower, and that’s all Jak seemed to be able to focus on. A second slower, and both of them would probably be dead. A very, very small part of him knew that he needed to stay calm – he couldn’t afford to lose control when he didn’t even know how many enemies he needed to deal with, or how heavily armed they were. But the larger part of him couldn’t get the image of a limp, fiery-haired body lying on the beach out of his mind. He wasn’t going through that again. He _wasn’t_. These Guards weren’t interested in taking Jak in alive and didn’t care who happened to get in the way, and that had been a fatal mistake.

The Guards had paused in their shooting, not brave enough to enter the building and trying in vain to see through the smoke caused by the growing fire. The pale elf slipped through the door, hidden by the smoke and debris, and drove his claws through the chest of the first Krimzon Guard he met, armor and all.

Inside the house, Daxter was wondering why he couldn’t go five minutes without something horrible happening. He was starting to think Jak was a jinx. That must be it. Things like this just didn’t _happen_ when Daxter was by himself! But throw Jak into the mix and before the day was over they would be fighting for their lives or needlessly putting their lives on the line. The young teen grumbled all of this to himself under his breath as he searched for his Scatter Gun. The fire wasn’t bad yet by any means, but it was spreading a lot more quickly than Daxter would have liked and he was actually starting to wish he had cleaned up the place a bit. The shock of nearly being shot to death hadn’t quite hit him yet, which he was glad for. He had a much bigger problem to deal with, and he didn’t know how to even begin handling it.

Screams had joined the sounds of gunshots and pounding boots and Zoomer engines. Daxter didn’t have to look outside to picture what was going on out there. After two years of living in Haven City, he knew about raids. It was something every citizen dreaded and feared – a squadron of Krimzon Guards marching onto your street and informing you that rebels had been found in a nearby house, or someone had been hoarding Dark Eco, or someone was suspected of distributing stolen supplies. Those rough, staticky voices condemning an entire block to death. It didn’t happen often, but it happened often enough that seeing any large number of Krimzon Guards sent a shudder down your spine and had your stomach inching up toward your throat. Daxter hadn’t thought it was true, at first; he had thought it was just another horrible rumor. It wasn’t not like people didn’t say horrible things about the KG behind their backs all the time. But one day he had gone to ‘borrow’ a loaf of hard, burnt bread from the local baker, and the local baker hadn’t been there. Or anyone else, for that matter. A whole street in the slums had disappeared overnight, and everyone else went about their daily business as if they had never been there at all. The old local baker was eventually replaced by an old lady from Main Town who hadn’t been able to afford her house after her husband and son were drafted into the Guard, and life in Haven City moved on.

The screams didn’t belong to citizens, though. This, thankfully, wasn’t an actual raid, but it was easy to mistake it for one. The piers swarmed with the reds and yellows of Krimzon Guards, armed and trigger happy, and the air practically buzzed with the hum of dozens of Hellcat Zoomers and the occasional Cruiser. A veritable army lurked outside their door, but it was the Krimzon Guards who were screaming.

Daxter had seen the look on Jak’s face as he had disappeared through the door and the screams had begun. It wasn’t the almost childlike expression of homicidal joy Jak sometimes got when he was about to kill something (or someone), which Daxter had actually started to get used to back when they had been fighting Lurkers. Nor was it the cold, calculating look Jak sometimes got when the enemy fought back a little more than he would have liked, the look of a predator who had tired of playing and was going in for the kill. This look couldn’t be described as anything other than _anger_. Even when Jak had first escaped from prison, he hadn’t looked quite so unhinged. There had still been a smile on his face as he ripped through those Krimzon Guards back in the prison, as disturbingly vicious as it may have been, but there was no smile tonight. Jak wasn’t playing, but neither were the Krimzon Guards. This wasn’t like the raid they had stumbled into as soon as they had slipped out of prison – a few floating crates of KG on a routine purging of some unfortunate neighborhood. The Guards here had one target, and he had just literally thrown himself at them.

“You’d think he’d learn ta _think_ before he leaps headfirst into danger,” the teen growled to himself, as if Jak had decided to take a stroll through the snake-infested jungle back home and hadn’t just chucked himself into an army of heavily armed Krimzon Guards. “But nooooooo. It’s all fun and _games_ to you, isn’t it, Jak?”

He wasn’t mad, not really. Not at Jak, anyway. More mad at…fate or…karma, or whatever it was that seemed to keep poking and prodding at the two of them all the time. He wished…

He wished he were home, plain and simple. Home, to clean white sand beneath his sandaled feet and the smell of a blindingly blue ocean. Home, to bright colors and relatively friendly people and a world that made _sense_. But he wasn’t home, and the longer he stayed in Haven City, the less likely it seemed like they would get to see Sandover again. He couldn’t cower behind Jak at the first sign of danger like he could back home. Daxter wasn’t a kid anymore and this wasn’t Sandover Village, by any stretch.

Another yell snapped him out of his thoughts, and the world seemed to speed up around him. The fire roared behind him, done with the bed and hungry for the rest of the ramshackle house, and gun blasts flashed outside the door like the fireworks they sometimes set off after a race. Daxter hastened his search for the Scatter Gun, ducked through the door when he finally found it, and waded into a sea of red. Crimson everywhere. The glaring scarlet of uniforms, the vibrant vermillion of Hellcat Zoomers and Cruisers, the glow of gunshots reflecting off of the red metallic surfaces, and everywhere – everywhere – the dark sanguine of blood. It was a scene out of a nightmare, a scene not unlike some of the nightmares Daxter had had before. Except the dead Krimzon Guards lying on the pier and floating in the water below had been Lurkers lying mutilated in the spider caves, and the dream had always ended when he fainted at the sight of Jak running toward him, covered in blood. He forced himself to look away from the bodies and look for Jak. Where was Jak? There. A pale, silver speck floating in the sea of red, arcs of violent purple whipping about him like vicious tentacles of living lightning. But it wasn’t enough. Jak wasn’t invincible, despite what he liked to think, and there were too many Guards. Jak was on the defensive, covered in cuts and favoring his left leg.

Jak…was _losing_. Jak didn’t seem to have realized it yet, by the way he darted between Guards, tearing through them like a Lurker shark through a school of fish, but these fish had teeth. It was almost like, in his bloodlust, he couldn’t feel the pain, and that was dangerous.

Daxter _knew_ Jak wasn’t invincible. He had been there through broken bones and multiple near-death experiences, but this…this was different. This wasn’t a boyhood stunt gone wrong, some story to laugh about the next day. These men were trying to _kill_ Jak and if Daxter didn’t think of something soon, they might very well _succeed_. He glanced around wildly, for help, for a sign, for _something_ , but the piers only swarmed with an endless wave of Guards…like an ant hill that had been kicked. Every door and every window was shut tight, but Daxter highly doubted anyone could possibly sleep through all this madness. He would get no help from his neighbors, though that didn’t surprise him. They hadn’t helped the couple who had lived there before, who had lived there for years, so why should they help a stranger, especially now when they would just get themselves killed?

But…maybe one of his neighbors _could_ help…

With all the chaos going on around Jak, no one noticed when he dashed down the pier and threw himself over the side, landing on a rickety yellow Zoomer that had definitely seen better days. No one noticed when he hotwired it and got the ancient engine to putter to life, who would be able to hear him over all of the screaming and shooting and general mayhem? Daxter hazarded a glance back up to the pier and winced. The young teen had done a lot of stupid, dangerous things in his life on account of Jak, and this probably took the cake. He was tired, and irritable, and really just wanted to go back to sleep and pretend this whole mess had just been a horrible blood loss induced nightmare, but when did things _ever_ go the way he wanted them to? Things were supposed to have gotten _easier_ after he had busted Jak out of prison, but everything had just gone pear-shaped.

As he strapped his gun to his back and slid his goggles over his eyes, Daxter might have smiled if his heart hadn’t been trying to pound its way up his throat. “Orange Lightning to the rescue…again.” At least there wasn’t any lava this time…just…a torrential storm of bullets, propelled through the air with a volatile mixture of Yellow and Red Eco, and enough Krimzon Guards to make Gol and Maia’s army of Lurkers look like a petting zoo. With that comforting thought in mind, Daxter revved the old engine as much as he dared and took off down the pier. Dodging the red-armored elf was no more difficult than ducking around trees though, to be fair, Daxter was out of practice and may have ‘accidentally’ sideswiped a few, knocking them to the ground where they clung desperately to the wooden planks. The automated security system had been activated and was patrolling he water below, and it didn’t recognize friend from foe. But soon enough the Guards noticed him and scrambled to duck out of his way. In front of him he could still hear screams of pain and terror, but behind him came shouts of confusion.

He pushed the Zoomer as fast as it would go, aiming for the silvery blur in front of him. Time seemed to slow as he grew closer and closer. Five feet away, he thought he could almost see the wide-eyed shock of the Guards’ expression behind their ugly face masks as they hesitated and backed out of his way. He grinned at them all as he soared passed and ducked around Jak at the last second, grabbing him around the waist and holding on for dear life. The Zoomer, coughed, sputtered, and spun, bowling over Guards and almost bringing up Daxter’s breakfast, and claws were digging into his arm where either Jak was trying to dismember him or prevent himself from falling – he wasn’t quite sure and he didn’t want to look down to find out. Guns fired again, filled the air with light and sound and deadly bullets, and Daxter wheeled the Zoomer around and took off again. The Guards on foot wouldn’t be able to keep up, but now the whole city would be on high alert and he didn’t have to look to know that the Hellcat Zoomers were on already on his tail. Sleek and lightly built, they were faster than the average Zoomer and twice as maneuverable, and they came with a fancy gun attached. There was no way Daxter would be able to outfly them.

His Zoomer lurched again as Jak hauled himself up and threw a leg over the side, and the pressure on his arm lifted even if the pain didn’t. Purple lightning crackled wildly around them, lashing at the sides of buildings if he drew too close and filling the air with hisses and snaps, but thankfully none of it was directed at Daxter. And when blood-covered arms slid around his waist, he knew at least that he wasn’t in danger of being ripped in half, even if he was still in danger of being shot to death. The fiery haired teen steered the Zoomer out of the water slums and into the dusty darkness of the slums proper. It was almost as if the fire in ‘his’ house had followed him as the Hellcats roared around the corner, their gunfire lighting up the night with reds and oranges and yellows. The night life was alive here, and panicked citizens screamed and ran from the chase, ducking into whatever building was nearest. The young teen had no idea where he was going; he just knew he needed to get _away_ , _somehow_. But where to go? Where to _go_?

The teen yelped as a gunshot hit the Zoomer in the tail, sending them careening toward a ramshackle apartment building before he managed to set them straight again. Another Hellcat, or maybe the same one that had fired, came up beside him and tried to ram into them, but Daxter changed hover zones at the last minute and the red Zoomer ran into the building beside them with a sickening crunch. As it wobbled drunkenly through the air, another Hellcat going too fast to stop slammed into it, and they both went down in a small explosion.

Daxter felt bad for the drivers and hoped, mostly, that they had miraculously survived, but he didn’t have time to worry about them. He glanced wildly around him, looking for _somewhere_ they could hide. Dead Town? No one usually ever went in there anymore, but there was no reason the Guards wouldn’t just follow them beyond the Wall. The Underground Hideout? No way. If the KG didn’t kill them first, Torn would for leading them right to his doorstep. And the thought of going to Krew for help actually forced a bubble of somewhat hysterical laughter out of him. The arms around his waist tightened, and Daxter tried to focus. He drove close to the ground, ducking around market stalls and parked Zoomers in hopes that the Hellcats would miscalculate and run into _something_ and back off just a little, but he could hear them closing in

“We need to jump,” Jak yelled over his shoulder, voice rougher than usual.

“ _WHAT?!_ ” So he didn’t need to yell quite that loud, but he was a bit panicked at the moment and Daxter could have _sworn_ Jak had told him to _jump_ from a Zoomer going a thousand miles an hour. He must have heard wrong.

“Trust me.” Right. Trust the homicidal maniac who had gotten them into this stupid mess in the first place. Well…to be fair, this particular mess wasn’t exactly Jak’s fault…It’s not like he had _asked_ the Baron to take an unhealthy interest in him and kidnap him and experiment on him for two years and give him even worse anger management problems than he’d already _had_ and hunt him down like a wild animal. And Jak had never steered Daxter wrong before…except that time they went to Misty Island…Wait, no, if they hadn’t gone then the world would have been destroyed by Dark Eco…

“ _Where_ exactly do you expect us to jump? Into that cozy little pile of rubble or maybe onto that nice, soft patch of broken concrete?” Daxter snapped over his shoulder, yelping again as another shot from a Hellcat came within inches of removing him of one of his ears.

Jak’s silence went on forever, it seemed to Daxter. One clawed hand buried itself in his shirt while the other disappeared…somewhere – Daxter wasn’t about to take his eyes off the road to see where exactly. It wasn’t until they had zipped around a corner and left the Hellcats’ line of sight that Jak moved, rolling off of the side of the Zoomer and dragging an unsuspecting Daxter with him. A hand clamped over Daxter’s mouth as they fell, muffling his scream of terror as they plummeted to the ground below them. Above, the yellow Zoomer wobbled but kept flying straight until is flew right out of Daxter’s sight. The night sky grew smaller as the earth rose up in his peripheral, seemingly swallowing them whole. And then they were crashing into the ground, rolling and tumbling, skidding against gravel and slamming into rock. An explosion went off somewhere above them, and Daxter could hear Krimzon Guards cursing and yelling, but they sounded distant and seemed to be moving further and further away. The night sky above him swam sickeningly slowly, until finally he couldn’t stand it anymore and he closed his eyes and let everything go black.


	13. Chapter 13

Jak could hear them arguing down the hall. He didn’t need to strain to hear them. Daxter was incapable of being anything other than loud, especially when upset, and the walls here were thin enough that Jak could just make out Torn’s own frustrated rasps. He couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying, but he didn’t need to to know they were arguing about him.

Somehow he and Daxter had managed to make it back to the Underground’s hideout. Battered, bruised, and bleeding, the two teens had hidden out of sight in one of the many trenches that broke up the streets of the slums like gaping wounds while they waited for the swarms of Krimzon Guards to give up their search. Not that the two teens were in any hurry to move, or could have hurried even if they’d wanted to. Jumping off of a speeding Zoomer and landing none to gently in a jagged crevasse filled with rubble and all sorts of trash ranging from broken bottles to miscellaneous Cruiser scrap had taken its toll on the both of them. If Jak’s leg had been bothering him before, it had become pure agony. And Daxter had banged his head on something hard on the way down. The blood trickling down the side of his face had made the injury look worse than it thankfully was, but the fiery-haired teen had still been quieter at first than Jak would have liked.

But maybe it hadn’t been the mild concussion that had kept Daxter so quiet. After all, that hadn’t been his only injury, and certainly not the worst. The worst injury was the tattered mess that was left of Daxter’s right arm. Five long, jagged gashes ran down his forearm from elbow to wrist. They hadn’t come from the fall, no, and that’s what had made these wounds so terrible. Jak had made these wounds himself.

In the present, Jak flexed his claws almost unconsciously as Torn’s voice rose just enough for the pale teen to be able to hear him.

“ _He can’t stay here_.”

And Jak couldn’t blame him – not at all. He was surprised the ex-KG had even let them get a word out when they’d first staggered into the hideout. They must have looked a sight, Jak covered from head to toe in a disgusting mixture of still-warm elven blood and congealed Metal Head ichor, and the both of them covered in dirt and whatever else had been in that trench. Alarms had still been blaring throughout the entire city and Torn had barely had to take a glance at them to realize they were the reason why. The tattooed elf had immediately laid into them, but Jak hadn’t been able to hear a single word coming out of the older elf’s mouth.

Because Jak’s nerves had been frayed and battered and nearly nonexistent, and all the Dark Eco-infused elf had seen when he’d looked at Torn had been those faded blue Krimzon Guard tattoos crisscrossing the other elf’s face. And suddenly it had been _Erol_ standing there in Torn’s place, leering at him from across the map-strewn table. In the span of a heartbeat, the cramped hideout had transformed into a dank prison cell, and Erol was _right there_ without any sort of steel door or barrier or Guards or _anything_ between them. Vulnerable and weak and Jak had _dreamed_ of this moment for so long.

He finally had his chance to pay Erol back for everything the sadistic bastard had ever done to him. Every time the older elf had strapped him to that Dark Eco machine and pumped poison into his veins; every agonizing, invasive experiment Erol had ever put him through; every malicious lie he had ever spun about Daxter. Two years of torment had all come rushing to the forefront of Jak’s mind like a blow to the head, and all the troubled teen had been able to see was a violent and bloody red. Jak didn’t remember lunging across the room, claws bared and howling, but the next thing Jak knew there’d been a scraggly pair of arms wrapped around his chest trying desperately to hold him back and the barrel of a gun staring him right between the eyes. Jak had writhed and pulled and lashed out, Dark Eco discharging off of him in chaotic waves, but he hadn’t been able to break free _. Not_ because those sticks for arms had been in any way capable of actually holding him back, but because he’d known it was _Daxter_ behind him and _nothing_ was worth hurting him – not even his revenge.

It had been that thought that had finally snapped Jak out of it, because he had _already_ hurt Daxter and the teen bore the bloody marks to prove it. It didn’t matter that Daxter had surprised him, yanking him off the pier on a speeding Zoomer like he had. It didn’t _matter_ that for half a second Jak had mistaken his best friend for another Krimzon Guard trying to kill him. He had dug his claws into the other teen’s flesh with the intention of ripping the offending appendage clear off, and the realization that he had almost done that to _Daxter_ made him sick.

The fight had gone completely out of Jak after that. He didn’t know what Daxter and Torn had talked about. He only knew that the younger teen had somehow miraculously managed to convince Torn to spare them a couple of health packs and let them borrow the hideout’s shower, which was where Jak found himself sequestered while the two redheads continued to argue with him out of earshot…mostly. That was fine with Jak. Right now, he couldn’t even look at Torn without seeing Erol’s cruel leer instead, and he couldn’t look at Daxter without bile creeping up the back of his throat.

Maybe the worst thing was that, instead of the horror or the shame Jak would have expected, all he could really feel was a black and boiling _anger_. Anger mostly at himself for not controlling himself and letting himself hurt, almost _kill_ , his best friend; but also at the Krimzon Guards, at Erol for pushing him and pushing him until it seemed that all that was left of him was this all-consuming anger, this insatiable hunger for blood and revenge that Jak wasn’t even entirely sure could be satisfied. This hate burning away inside of him wouldn’t just go away if, _when_ , he managed to kill Erol and Baron Praxis. It was too strong, too engrained into him, flowing in his veins. And if killing _Erol_ wouldn’t satisfy the bloodlust, who was to say that he wouldn’t eventually turn that rage onto people he cared about? It had already happened before. He had attacked _Samos_ , for Precursors’ sakes, and he almost thought of the ornery old log as a sort of father figure, in the Sage’s kinder moments.

Jak glared down at his clawed hands, covered in wet and drying blood in blacks and reds and varying shades between, Metal Head and elf alike. And Daxter’s, too, now. Two years ago, the sight, the feel, of all this blood would have sickened him. _Terrified_ him. Two years ago Jak had barely been able to keep it together after accidentally killing a _Lurker rat_ , of all things. He never would have been capable of killing another elf in cold blood, not with his own hands, and he certainly wouldn’t have _enjoyed_ it.

The thought only made him angrier.

With a scowl, Jak dropped his hands and turned his inky black glare on the shower instead. He was in a small room, if it could be called that, tucked at the back of a narrow hallway easily missed if one wasn’t looking for it when they first came into the hideout. The ‘shower’ itself was barely more than a pipe along the wall, but it was a novelty to Jak. They’d had power at Sandover, fueled by Blue Eco redirected from the Precursor temple in the jungle, and they’d used it to light their homes and power things like Keira’s Zoomer and the fisherman’s boat. They’d even used water wheels on Sentinel Beach. They had never had running water, though. No, Jak hadn’t known the joys of running water until he had come to Haven City. Every now and then, when his jailers had felt he was in need of a bath, the Krimzon Guards in charge of keeping him alive had loved to spray him with a high-pressure hose. He could easily remember how they had all laughed and jeered mocked as the infuriated freak had spluttered and cursed and tried in vain to fight against the spray and get to them. It hadn’t been all that long ago.

Jak glanced sideways toward the door, suddenly wary of some elf in red shoving the door open and spraying him when he least expected it, but no one came. Of course not. This wasn’t some cell in the prison; it _wasn’t_. Even if the walls of the cramped room were starting to feel as if they were closing in on him. Even if the poor lighting was starting to remind him of the constant green glow of his cell block. Even if the pipes along the wall were reminiscent of the metal that had seemed to make up the entirety of the prison. The door, the only door, to the room was metal, and thicker than any door to a shower had any real need to be, but it had a knob (and Jak had checked it twice just to make sure it hadn’t somehow locked behind him). He could leave this dank little room whenever he wanted.

Jak quickly turned the lever on the pipe in front of him just for something, anything, to get his mind off of the prison. The blast of icy cold water that resulted was shocking…but not in the way he had dreaded. This wasn’t a hose, unforgiving and slamming him into a hard cell wall. This almost, _almost_ , felt like rain, and Jak hadn’t seen or felt or even heard rain for over two years. Against all his better judgement and even his Eco-enhanced instincts, Jak found himself closing his eyes and finally relaxing under the spray, perhaps for the first time since he’d escaped the prison. Even with Daxter beside him, or maybe _because_ he had been beside him, Jak had always been on edge, worried that any moment could be the one where the Krimzon Guards would finally recognize him and try to kill them – or worse, try to throw them both into prison cells.

But the fine mist coming from the shower head seemed to be washing away some of the anxiety and even the rage that had been plaguing him, carrying it down the drain with the pinks and mottled browns of the blood slowly dripping from his skin and ruined clothes. With one last wary glance toward the door, Jak started removing the bits and pieces that made up his armor. The shoulder pad, the numerous belts and buckles, and his gloves all fell to the sullied floor. With a grunt of mild disgust, he pried the long-sleeved shirt off, wincing at the feel of dried blood pulling at his skin. Daxter would probably kill him when he realized all the clothes he’d gotten for him were pretty much ruined now, but the thought only brought a faint smile to Jak’s face.

He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, trying to focus on the water splashing against his skin and nothing else. Memories came unbidden but not unwelcome to his troubled mind. Playing on the beach during a storm and dancing with the waves; training amongst the many geysers that had given Geyser Rock its name; the seemingly endless rain that had plagued Rock Village and turned most of the surrounding area into a swamp.

_Home_ , and Jak was really starting to wonder if he would ever see it again…

 

-x-

Daxter paused in the middle of the narrow, dimly lit hallway that led to what few other rooms existed in the Underground’s sorry excuse for a hideout. He would have run a fretful hand through his hair if his arms hadn’t been full of clothes. They weren’t anything special, just a slightly mismatched outfit he’d scrounged together from Torn’s version of a ‘Lost and Found’ box – a metal bin where he dumped the unclaimed belongings of those Underground members who never reported back.

They were lucky they were getting that much. Torn had _not_ been happy to see them, and that was the mother of all understatements. But there wasn’t exactly anywhere else for the two teenagers to go. Even if the water slums weren’t currently crawling with Krimzon Guards, the house he and Jak had essentially been squatting in couldn’t be much more than a soggy pile of ash by now. One of the few reminder’s Daxter had that there had been some decent people in this cesspool of a city, and now it and everything else that had belonged to that elderly couple who had helped him so much was gone. Sleeping on the streets was out as well; it would be even harder to hide now that the Krimzon Guard knew Jak wasn’t alone, though hopefully they hadn’t gotten very good look at the fiery-haired teen in all the chaos.

But, in the end, Daxter had used his considerable wiles to convince Torn to let them stay and, so long as Torn kept _his_ end of the deal, Daxter would try to keep his. He wouldn’t be doing it for Torn, anyway. Not really. To be honest, Torn and the army of Krimzon Guards swarming with renewed vigor throughout the city were pretty much the _least_ of his concerns.

Because Jak hadn’t made a _peep_ since he’d nearly ripped Torn’s heavily-tattooed head from his shoulders, and that bothered Daxter more than he ever thought it could.

For fifteen years, Jak had remained nearly silent. He’d laughed freely and often, had grunted when he’d gotten injured and shouted during training and fights, and he’d even added blood-curdling snarls and howls to the short list of sounds he made; but, for whatever reason, Jak had always refused to utter a single word. It had bothered Daxter, unrepentant chatterbox that he was, for years. He’d tried everything he could possibly think of to try and convince his friend to talk to him, and Jak had always borne through each attempt with an easy if slightly exasperated smile. The redhead had eventually given up and accepted Jak’s silence as one of the many unexplainable mysteries of the universe, right up there with the Precursors’ obsession with such a hideous shade of orange.

Daxter had had to learn to communicate with the other elf without using words. He had taken the time to get to know Jak more than anyone in Sandover, more so even than Keira or Samos or even Jak’s own uncle. Perhaps part of it, a large part of it really, had been because Jak had been the only one willing to put up with Daxter for any significant length of time. In fact, Jak had actually seemed to enjoy the time they spent together – a far cry from how the rest of the villagers had treated the fiery-haired youth. Over the years, Daxter had learned how to read just about every expression on his friend’s face, could gauge his friend’s thoughts and feelings just by the way the older teen held himself, and had sometimes felt he’d known the blue-eyed teen better than he’d known his own self.

So who would have thought that after so many years of silence, Daxter would grow so dependent on his friend’s voice? Jak hadn’t even said that much, to be honest. But the past two years had changed things between them in ways Daxter hadn’t even considered, or even thought possible. Even after Jak had taken a dip in Dark Eco and gotten in touch with his angry, homicidal side, Daxter had still been able to read him like a book. There’d been a couple of new chapters to learn, sure, and some rough patches, but the two of them had figured it out like they always did. But now there was a…not a _distance_ , exactly…but some things had definitely changed.

Jak, two years ago, had worn his emotions on his sleeve – had them tattooed across his forehead, practically. That had been half of what made it so easy, for Daxter at least, to understand him so well. Now Jak’s feelings were far more guarded, stowed away under all the layers of anger and hatred that had gotten him through the past two years, and Daxter couldn’t read him at a glance like he used to. He was often left floundering in a way he couldn’t remember doing in years, which, okay, he could deal with because, hello, two years of _torture_. Or at least that’s what Daxter assumed had happened. There was no other way to explain the mess of scars and burns and myriad of other roughly healed wounds marring nearly every inch of Jak’s pasty skin. Daxter couldn’t help but agonize on what _exactly_ had happened to Jak, and how much the younger teen could have maybe prevented if he had just been a _little_ bit faster, a little bit smarter, but Daxter could understand that there were some things his friend wanted to keep to himself. It wasn’t as if Daxter hadn’t kept a few key secrets to himself over the years. But still, of all the times for his Jak-reading powers to have failed, did this _have_ to be one of them?

Because not only had Jak stopped speaking – he refused to even _look_ at the younger teen. After he had nearly mauled Torn (again), he had had retreated to lurk silently by the front entrance, body tensed not because he was worried or angry or bracing for a fight but because he was trying, for the first time in living memory, to keep his emotions to himself. And, for the life of him, Daxter couldn’t figure out what had suddenly changed between them, or how the heck he had managed to piss Jak off (which he had thought, after all these years, might have actually been impossible), because he had never encountered this particular problem before.

Shaking his head, Daxter started to take another step down the hallway toward the room Torn had said was the shower, but he found his feet had become inexplicably glued to the grimy floor. He’d planned to just leave the clothes outside the door and go back to meticulously planning different ways of keeping the two of them alive for the foreseeable future, but now he couldn’t even seem to manage putting one foot in front of the other. It wasn’t as if, in all their long years of friendship, he and Jak had never gotten into a fight before. After the whole wumpbee incident, Daxter hadn’t spoken to the older boy for a week, and, as soon as the swelling had gone down enough, he had attempted to beat the unrepentant teen within an inch of his life. He hadn’t gotten a single punch in and had, in fact, lost that fight horribly, but they had eventually made up. Like they always did. And there had been countless other fights, ranging from the serious (the first time Jak tried to teach Daxter how to swim, only for the fiery-haired youth to nearly be eaten by a Lurker shark) to the mundane (every time Daxter put up some token protest to whatever adventure Jak had concocted for the day). And yet, despite all this, Daxter somehow found the thought of Jak giving him the silent treatment more terrifying than facing the guy covered from head to toe in blood and ichor and who knows what else.

It was completely ridiculous, and ironic, and the truth. But he had never let Jak’s silence stop him before, had he? So why should it now?

With that thought in mind, Daxter squared his shoulders and strolled up to the door at the end of the hall with a confidence that, to anyone but Jak himself, who was safely on the other side of a closed door, would have seemed completely genuine. And before that fake confidence could desert him, he quickly knocked and yelled over the sound of running water.

“Hey, there’s some new clothes out here for ya.” Well, new relatively speaking, he supposed. But for some reason, Daxter figured that shopping wouldn’t be an option for the two of them anytime soon. For now, Jak could just deal with these hideous, morbid versions of hand-me-downs if he didn’t want to walk around looking like a serial killer. “See if you can keep these ones clean for longer than five seconds, would ya?”

Now, if everything had gone according to plan, Daxter would have unceremoniously dropped the aforementioned pile of hideous clothes onto the floor and moseyed back to the main room to resume his glaring contest with Torn. The redhead hadn’t really expected a response considering how characteristically quiet Jak had gotten. But, of course, nothing ever went according to plan. Just as Daxter was turning to make his way down the hall, the door to the shower opened and there stood Jak looking a little bit like a drowned rat. “What was that?”

That inky black gaze had settled on him for barely half a second before sliding away again, though Daxter hardly noticed. Seeing Jak shirtless wasn’t anything new. Seeing Jak shirtless and _dripping wet_ wasn’t exactly anything new, either. Growing up in a place like Sandover where the heat couldn’t be described as anything other than stifling nine months out of the year and the beach was literally a stone’s throw away meant he’d had years to desensitize himself to the sight. Somewhat. But that had been _before._ Before the odd puncture-like marks that dotted the insides of Jak’s elbows like strange and unfamiliar constellations. Before the labyrinth of scars riddled across his pale skin – some unnaturally straight and precise, some jagged and terrible.

And it wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen them before; he knew they were there. But after seeing them for the first time the night he’d sprung Jak from prison, he’d tried very hard not to notice them again. Because he couldn’t look at any of those marks without thinking about what might have caused those scars, imagining the kind of agony Jak had to have gone through to get wounds like that, wondering how fewer marks the older teen might have if Daxter had just been a little bit _faster_ , dammit, and it was no wonder Jak refused to look at him now, he had finally wised up and realized what a horri-.

“ _Daxter!_ ”

Heavy, familiar hands landed on Daxter’s shoulders, startling the younger of the two out of his increasingly hysterical thoughts. Black eyes stared up at him in concern, and Daxter realized too late that all the guilt he had been trying to bury was written as plain as day across his face. He would have fidgeted, if his hands hadn’t already been full. Dark Eco crackled unconsciously along his skin, prickly but not painful by any means. And there was still blood encrusted on those ridiculous claws of Jak’s, and who knew what all this exposure to the world’s supposedly deadliest substance was secretly doing to him, but somehow Daxter found himself relaxing anyway.

“And here I was startin’ to wonder if you’d gone back to being mute,” Daxter quipped the first thing that came to mind before Jak could comment on his slip. Probably not the best thing to say if his ultimate goal was to somehow convince the older elf to _talk_ , but tact had never been, and never would be, one of his strong suits. And Jak, used to Daxter as he was, had usually responded to his insensitive comments with nothing worse than an exasperated eye roll. Instead, Jak’s eyes widened slightly with surprise and…wait….was that – that wasn’t _fear_ , was it? It couldn’t be. No way! Oh, no. There was no way in _heck_ Daxter was letting this drop now. This was _Jak_ they were talking about – the guy who’d saved the world without batting an eyelash or breaking a sweat. What in the world could he _possibly_ be afraid of?

When Jak went to pull away, hands jerking away as if he’d been burned, Daxter snatched one of the fleeing appendages by the wrist and refused to let go. “Ah, no you don’t!” he snapped, glaring into startled black eyes. “You’ve been acting funny all night and I’m getting’ to the bottom of it right now. Talk to me.”

He remembered all of the other times he had asked (and begged and pleaded and whined and tried to coerce) Jak to talk to him, unsuccessfully, over the years, but none of these moments seemed so important as this one. Jak remained silent for a long moment, staring, almost glaring, at Daxter’s tanned fingers wrapped around his chalky white wrist. For perhaps the first time since Jak had had his little accident, Daxter didn’t feel the familiar snap, crackle, and pop of Dark Eco against his skin. He was surprised at how strange touching Jak felt without it. He had gotten used to the feel of Jak’s Eco arcing across his skin, to it reaching out for him if he got close enough. He had even sort of, kind of, if he admitted it to himself, grown to like it. Over the months it had just become another part of Jak, as expressive and familiar as his smile or the way he held himself. The younger elf really didn’t want to think about what its absence meant now.

Just when Daxter was starting to fear that he would have to resort to more drastic measures to convince his troubled friend to talk, Jak let out a frustrated sigh more akin to a growl and looked away, though he made no effort to take his hand back. “Daxter…things are getting dangerous…”

The older teen trailed off, unused to having to explain himself through words to someone who had always known him so well, inside and out. Daxter tried to wait patiently – really, he did – but patience, like tact, had never been one of his strong suits. “ _Really_? ‘Cause I hadn’t even noticed. So far it’s been like a walk in the park! Not a single giant robot or any tunnels of hot, boiling lava in sight!”

Jak turned to glare at him, but there was no heat behind it. “This is different, Dax.”

“ _Please_ , explain to me how nearly being clubbed to death by slavering Lurkers and nearly being torn in half by slavering Metal Heads is _any_ different!” Daxter asked incredulously. None of this made any sense. Jak had never worried like this before. Heck, he barely ever worried about _anything_. _Dangerous_? Ha! Danger was Jak’s middle name! He practically _lived_ for the thrill of putting his (and by association, Daxter’s) life in danger, much to the younger elf’s chagrin. Worrying had always been Daxter’s sole responsibility and a duty he took very seriously.

Jak’s clawed hand twisted in Daxter’s grip as he tried half-heartedly to pull away, but Daxter refused to let go and Jak refused to use his strength to break his grip. It wouldn’t have taken much force at all, but still…

“I could have killed you, Daxter,” Jak finally admitted, his black gaze boring unwaveringly into Daxter’s own for the first time since their mad race through the city. “I almost did. _Doesn’t that bother you_?”

Oh. _Oh…._ For the love of - !

Of all the reactions Jak might have expected, Daxter rolling his eyes and throwing his hands up in the air in exasperation hadn’t been one of them. He unconsciously rubbed his freed wrist as he watched his fiery-haired friend warily, the skin feeling oddly warm. The glare Daxter leveled him with could have curdled milk. It was the same disapproving look he’d always given him those few times Jak had decided to do something reckless on his own and had come home with new and interesting injuries (or those even more exciting times when he hadn’t been able to make it back to Sandover at all due to said injuries), and it had the same cowing effect it had had on him not so long ago – a feat even Samos himself couldn’t boast of.

“ _That’s_ what this is all about?” Daxter near shrieked, his hands on his nonexistent hips. “ _You’ve_ been freaking out because you reacted normally to being grabbed at _nearly a hundred miles per hour_?! You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me!”

“Nothing about _this_ is normal,” Jak remarked bitterly, gesturing agitatedly toward the pitch black horns peeking through unnaturally silver hair; the pale, lifeless skin; the bottomless, empty pits that were his eyes. Even his _thoughts_ weren’t _normal_ anymore, tainted as even his mind had become with pain and hatred and Dark Eco. There were times when Jak started to fear _himself_ and what he was capable of, and yet Daxter could stand there barely a foot away from him, could stand to _touch_ him, and act as if nothing was wrong. As if Jak’s hands weren’t covered in blood, in _his_ blood. The pale teen couldn’t understand how Daxter could have that much faith in him when he couldn’t even trust himself.

“It was barely even a _scratch_!” Daxter protested, though he winced a little under Jak’s disbelieving glare. “Alright, alright, so it was a little bit more than a scratch. Nothin’ a couple o’ health packs didn’t fix! Seriously, you’re makin’ a big deal over a teensy little accident.”

“The next ‘accident’ could kill you.”

For once, Daxter didn’t seem to have a witty or sarcastic comment up his sleeve. The two stood silently on opposite sides of the door’s threshold, the only sound the rush of ice cold water still spraying from the rusty faucet. Dark blue eyes roved critically over the lines of his face, along his shoulders, and Jak tensed under the scrutiny but refused to look away. And then Daxter shook his head and folded his arms over his stomach, a slow smile spreading over his face and showing off his prominent front teeth. It was an easy smile that Jak never had seen enough of, not even back home. Daxter’s smiles had always tended to lean more toward leers and smirks, especially around other people. This, though? Maybe this had been a smile just for Jak.

“But it won’t,” Daxter replied firmly, casually, as if he were simply stating a fact that the older teen should have known and accepted already.

_How do you know?_ Jak wondered as he glanced away, shaking his head doubtfully at his friend’s easy assurance. He jumped slightly as warm fingers and a gloved palm suddenly slid onto his shoulder, different from what he remembered and yet achingly familiar. For so long the only physical contact he had ever experienced had always led to pain and humiliation; being able to feel something, anything else was…good. Almost against his will, his Dark Eco sparked to life and reached out hesitantly, as light and feathery as cobwebs. And that smile was still there when he looked again, stronger than before. Jak could feel his fears faltering at the sight of it; tripping, slipping away. Not going away entirely, by any means, but the raw panic, the doubt, that had haunted him all night was lifting.

“Because I trust ya, Jak. You know that, don’tcha? We’re in this mess together,” Daxter promised, squeezing his shoulder reassuringly. And Jak _had_ known this, had never really doubted it, and maybe that was part of what had been so terrifying. That apparently no matter what Jak did, no matter how horrible he became, Daxter would always stick by him. That Jak would always be the one danger Daxter refused to stay away from. “Hey! If you’re gettin’ it into that thick skull ‘o yours that you’re goin’ on this adventure without me, then you got another thing coming. ‘Cause there ain’t _no_ _way_ I’m letting you get into trouble without _me_!

“You gotta stop worryin’ so much, big guy. And ya know why?”

Jak arched an eyebrow at the taller of the two, a small smirk of his own finally forming at Daxter’s enthusiasm. It would only last for so long, after all. “Because that’s _your_ job?”

“Damn straight!” Daxter crowed emphatically, looking pleased with himself. And Daxter did have a point. Nothing would come of Jak revealing how worried he really was. Not when it obviously bothered Daxter so much and when there seemed to be nothing he could do about it. He was too selfish to push Daxter away and, even if he did, he would constantly be wondering how he was doing, wondering if he was _safe_ and tearing himself apart because he would _know_ the answer. There was no such thing as _safe_ here in this city. In this world where everything was pitted against them, all he could do was try to protect Daxter as best he could. From the Krimzon Guard, the Metal Heads, his own fears…Even – no, _especially_ – from himself.


End file.
